Count up all the Chances
by TheVelvetDusk
Summary: "Four hundred and twenty-four days was a damn long time to spend apart from the one person who understood you better than anyone." (canon divergent lyatt fic; post 2x08 universe)
1. Bayeux, France

_a/n: I did not want to write a multi-chap story. Here I am, totally writing a multi-chap story. I will be side-eyeing myself for this forever and ever._

 _So ironic coincidences aside, I promise that a lot of this fic was written/mentally outlined prior to the S2 finale. You may see some unintended parallels (ahem - THE BEARD & #SaveRufus), so maybe I'm starting to develop Jiya-esque super powers here..? But the flip side is that it doesn't follow anything that happened in 2x09 or 2x10, so consider this story to be a canon-divergent time leap from 2x08 onward._

 _I owe most of my inspiration to the legendary Celine Dion. No joke. That woman knows her drama. Title & inspo are taken from the lyrics of_ It's All Coming Back to Me Now. _Lastly, thanks are due to the saltmates who were forced to continually reassure me that this premise wasn't total crap. Hopefully they weren't lying ;)_

* * *

If this was it - if this was really the place he'd be taking her away from - then maybe he was making a monumental mistake.

There was a gurgle of water running up and over a giant wooden wheel, stone walkways stretching in all directions, the scent of freshly baked bread wafting out to greet him from one doorway to the next, and so many vibrant flowers arranged in tidy window boxes on just about every building in sight. Wyatt had seen his fair share of the world thanks to the ever-unraveling course charted for him through the U.S. Army, but this was different. This was a frickin' fairy tale.

Bayeux, France. A hamlet of a town near the coast of Normandy. Just a small blip on the map, but if he'd done his job well, it was the most important small blip in the whole damn world - the blip that Lucy Preston called home these days.

She hadn't made it easy for him. His last trace of her given name had gotten him to Amsterdam, but she'd disappeared from there, not a single swipe of a credit card, no texts or calls - sent or received - since her plane had landed at Schiphol fourteen months ago. She'd ditched the phone, ditched her bank account, ditched him.

Not that he blamed her for that last one. Not for the ditching part, anyway. The ditching without a goodbye, though? The leaving in the middle of the night with nothing but a hastily scrawled note - I need more time, see you soon - flung across his kitchen counter? Yeah, he did sorta blame her for that one, especially once it became clear that her definition of 'soon' had outlasted his by a country mile.

He was surprised to feel a quick bubble of anger when he caught his first glimpse of her.

There she sat, three different books huddled around the table, a fourth billowing open in front of her as she tried her damnedest to keep the pages from flipping ahead with the breeze. There was a white mug to one side, a plate of nothing but crumbs discarded beyond her wall of books, and a clear tumbler of juice close to her elbow...close enough that he was surprised the tumbler hadn't met pavement yet. She had sunglasses perched high on her head, a windblown bun perched even higher. Simple clothing, muted colors, cleanly tailored lines showcasing the slim contours of her body. She looked as natural to the climate as a native born citizen.

He'd expected to feel a lot of things, nothing short of an emotional barrage - relief, anticipation, joy, fascination, uncertainty. Probably a healthy dose of shock, too. He may have known exactly why he'd flown across the ocean long before he'd boarded a 747 to foreign soil, but that didn't mean he was prepared for the actual event in question. It had been four hundred and twenty-four days since he fell asleep with his arms around her. Four hundred and twenty-four days since he'd looked into those endless smoky quartz eyes. Four hundred and twenty-four days without her voice. She was bound to knock him off his guard even if he was the one in pursuit. Four hundred and twenty-four days was a damn long time to spend apart from the one person who understood you better than anyone.

But anger...anger was what unexpectedly rose from his stomach to his throat, from his throat to his red-tipped ears. Wyatt was well aware that he resented the manner in which she'd made her exit, but he thought he was far beyond resenting the exit itself.

And God, he was an idiot for thinking she'd ever choose to leave any of this behind. He was an even bigger idiot for thinking he could handle this situation with anything resembling neutral objectivity. Even from a distance, she was able to mow him down at warp speed, sending the reordered fragments of his life into disarray all over again.

And apparently he wasn't the only one experiencing those massive shifts in the fabric of his existence.

Lucy's shoulders stiffened first. She marked her spot in the book and closed it, clutching tightly at the binding as she breathed deeply. He watched her shake the tension from her body once, then twice. She reached for the glass and - as he'd pretty much foretold - almost knocked it over with the fickle stutter of her hand.

If she already felt his eyes on her, then he might as well go rip off the band-aid, right? It took two false starts to make his way to her table, absently wondering if outdoor cafes in provincial France were known for stocking hard liquor as he ambled across the street. He had a feeling this conversation would require vast quantities of liquid courage, and bad habits die hard...or in his case, they never really died at all.

* * *

If this was it - if this was really the day they'd be taking her away from here - then maybe she'd finally slipped up and made the monumental mistake that was bound to give her up eventually.

All good things came to an end, right? She'd braced herself for this haven of solitude to all come crashing down at any given moment. The pinprick sensation of being watched everywhere she went, the quick glances over her shoulder, the shuffle of four or five different aliases, her new habit of never looking anyone in the eye for longer than necessary - nothing about the life she'd left behind had actually been left behind. There was no such thing as a security blanket for her, not a single night she'd slept easily, not a day passing her by without experiencing some flare of panic from deep within. Lucy was under no illusions about her ultimate fate. Rittenhouse had been down when she'd booked a one-way passage to Europe, but she never once assumed they were out of the game for good. They would rebuild from the shadows. They would find her as soon as they had the resources to do so. They would come, either to kill her or brainwash her, and that would be the end of it. Fate wouldn't pass her over another time.

Unless he came first, but she'd stopped fantasizing about that impossibility somewhere in the middle of a bitterly frigid winter. She'd ruthlessly abandoned the man who'd already chalked up far too many ruthless abandonments. She'd slid her traitorous hand over his cheek as he stirred from sleep on the night they'd finally fallen back into bed together; she'd eased Wyatt back into dreamland with a softly spoken lie, a deceitfully reassuring touch. He'd actually smiled at her - eyes not really open, his voice sluggishly forming shapeless grunts instead of actual words, boyish features idling loosely as he tried to understand why she was separating herself from him. And then he'd smiled right as he gave up and faded away once more, not waking again until she was long gone.

After that mutinous performance, not even Wyatt could be foolish enough to look for her now. And maybe she'd ripped his heart out when he realized she wasn't actually coming back, but if it was any consolation, she'd sure as hell ripped out her own too.

Knowing him, that probably wouldn't be any consolation at all.

Would he even know what happened to her? Would they make it a point to flaunt her capture - or her assassination - as one final point of ridicule to fling back in his face? Or would it be quiet, unnoticeable, a candle snuffed out in the dead of night? He'd already lived without her for more than a year. What difference would it make if she was existing in relative silence here or not existing in actual silence for the rest of his days? He wouldn't know any better. Gone was just gone.

Lucy kept her eyes low as the chair across from her scraped dissentingly over the sidewalk. This was better than a gun to the ribs or a knife to the throat. At least they were going to pretend it was a casual meeting among acquaintances and not a hostile takeover.

"Well you're a sight for some very sore eyes, ma'am."

For the first time in fourteen months, her paranoia was not unfounded. Someone who knew her - the real her - had been silently inspecting her every move from across the street. Her mistake was in assuming which party would be the first to hunt her down. What did it say about her to admit that she'd been far more prepared to deal with that gun or knife than she was to deal with him? Wyatt was a threatening weapon in his own right, a sharper blade to her insides than anything Rittenhouse could have wagered against her.

His greeting may have sounded light and familiar, charming even, but by the time Lucy could reluctantly lift her gaze to meet his, there was no fond reception reflected back at her. He was uncharacteristically poker-faced as he regarded her from his side of the table; or maybe that wasn't so uncharacteristic for Wyatt Logan on a mission, which was clearly what this was to him. She couldn't remember a time when he'd been so devoid of emotion - good or bad - as he scanned her face.

But his eyes - even when they held nothing but granite stoicism - were still an astonishing phenomenon to behold. They were the same glorious blue that she saw every time she stared out over the English Channel, the color that dazzled between a blurred horizon of sky and water as she stood on the whipping coastline of Omaha Beach. Even on another continent, with more than 5,000 miles between them, she had no hope of removing him from her memory. She saw him in everything. He was everywhere she went.

"Nice to see you too, Lucy," he said with the smallest shake of his head, a hard smirk forming slowly at her dumbfounded silence.

Hearing her real name spoken out loud for the first time in ages was just one more setback to her short-circuiting brain. Hearing it from his smooth, cavernous rumble of a voice was only adding to the chaos in her head.

She parted her lips, sighed when words continued to fail her, and leaned back in her chair to study him further. To absorb the fact that his perpetual dash of stubble was now a thick, fully-formed beard. To take note of the deep tan that clung to his forearms and dappled over his nose. To appreciate the sturdy outline of what appeared to be broadened shoulders, as if his shoulders had not already been broad enough to keep her adequately impressed.

Wyatt angled himself over the table, his expression varying ever so slightly, a minuscule crack in an otherwise indestructible surface. "It seems I'm not the only one with sore eyes."

"I was just trying to find you beneath that shrub on your face."

"Ah, she speaks," he boasted with a grin, long fingers ruffling through his facial hair in what seemed to be a new preoccupied gesture of his. "I almost lost the beard before my little excursion across the pond, but then I thought - hey, maybe she'll like it. Worth a shot, right?"

Lucy wrinkled her nose with manufactured distaste. "There's scruff and then there's bush country mountain man. Sorry to inform you, but your shot missed the target."

On most men, that statement would have been true. On Wyatt, bush country mountain man looked like a fantasy ripped straight out of a trashy romance novel.

His grin grew despite her disapproval. "I'm just glad to hear that my five month stint in the Franklins wasn't a total sham. Looking like a washed-up city boy that whole time would've brought unimaginable shame to the memory of Grandpa Sherwin."

"The Franklins?" she was asking with genuine interest before she could stop herself.

"Mountain range just north of El Paso. We have an old family cabin tucked up between Fort Bliss and North Franklin Mountain. The only piece of property worth inheriting on either side of the gene pool, if you ask me."

The last bit of his stiff indifference had evaporated into a melodic self-possession that she'd never really seen on him until now. Not only was that glow of his as mysterious as it was attractive, but it was actually grating a quickly frazzling nerve somewhere inside of her. He'd achieved what she hadn't; he'd found a way to be at peace with himself, an elusive shred of contentment that she'd chased and chased but still couldn't grasp.

Something cold stabbed against her heart. She dropped her gaze to the tabletop and began to pick at the hardened droplet of coffee that stained the side of her mug. "What are you doing here, Wyatt?"

"I heard France is lovely this time of year."

Her eyes clicked back up to his with a scoff. "Try again."

His elbows came to rest over the table, hands folding beneath his chin, blue eyes gleaming bright in the sunshine. "Rittenhouse has Rufus."

That stabbing sensation burned deeper as she choked out a litany of half-formed questions. "What? Why? Why him? How did they - "

"Breathe," he instructed calmly, fingers tightening together at his jaw. "And lower your voice while you're at it."

Lucy was barely able to refrain from flipping the table over onto his lap. She was all but seething as she fired back again. "How, Wyatt? Tell me what happened."

And he did. He told her everything.

The truth did nothing to alleviate her need to flip that damn table and watch everything - the books, the dishes, all of it - go rolling through the streets of an otherwise idyllic Bayeux.

* * *

 _To be continued! And in case you were wondering,_ _I live & breathe reviews. That's all for now._


	2. Battlefields, Beaches, Bunkers

_a/n : Thank you so much for all of the reviews & follows :) I hope to have some time tomorrow (or actually today, seeing as *someone* is unsurprisingly up too late right now) to reply to some of you - especially a select few who have made very accurate predictions about where this story may be headed! _

_My eyes got very heavy by the end of this editing sesh, so apologies for what mistakes may have slipped through. Hope you all enjoy chapter 2!_

* * *

"Sorry. I have to go."

That was it, all she had to say for herself.

Wyatt had just delivered a solid fifteen minutes worth of intel and Lucy's only response was to calmly arrange a few coins of payment next to the empty plate, scoop her book collection into a leather bag, and politely excuse herself with all the sentiment of a stony-eyed gargoyle.

"You - that's it? You're just _going_? Going where?"

"I have the afternoon shift at work. We…" she sighed, and her eyebrows had the decency to crowd together in some minor show of distress, "...we can talk afterwards."

"You're working?" he asked with another stroke of disbelief.

Now her eyebrows were arched high, and that change was definitely not in his favor. "What, you think I'm living off of my cult family's trust fund or something? Yes, Wyatt, I'm working."

It hadn't escaped his notice that she could only bring herself to use his name when it was accompanied by a note of exasperation.

"Fine. Where do you work? I'll wait for you there."

Skepticism rippled over her face in waves.

God, it was really this bad? The rift between them gaped so damn wide that even the smallest admission about her life, her job, her _anything_ , was encrypted behind a wall of hesitance.

"I work for a tour company," she admitted grudgingly. "It's actually run out of that hotel-bistro combo right behind you, so you might as well just hang out here."

Wyatt glanced over his shoulder, smiling faintly at the awning-trimmed inn that possessed just as much charm as everything else around them. It suited her. The whole damn town suited her.

"So you're giving World War II tours? That's a pretty good fit, isn't it?"

"I actually work the front desk most of the time. I only do tours when they need me to fill in."

"Really?" he asked doubtfully. "Don't they know that - "

"No." Her chin cut toward him sharply, face flooding with apprehension. "The less they know the better, okay? I told them I was a history buff, nothing else. Obviously I haven't had any trouble memorizing the script they gave me. I play it off like I have a photographic memory."

"You practically do," he conceded with a small smile.

"Not quite," she answered lightly, not fully able to stifle the tiptoe of pride in her voice. "Anyway, I need to get in there, so - "

"So go on. I'll be fine here."

Lucy rose to her feet, a shimmer of uncertainty breaking through an otherwise impenetrable facade. "You could...I mean, if you want something a little more interesting to do while you wait, there's a tour leaving from here in just a few minutes."

"A tour?" he echoed slowly, getting up to follow her as she began to pick her way between the web of adjoining tables. "I don't know if that's really my thing…"

"You might be surprised. The entire route revolves around points of interest from the war...battlefields, beaches, bunkers - "

"Anything that doesn't start with a B?" he asked with a smirk.

Her mouth quirked, seemingly against her will. "Yeah, a _museum_ , one that's devoted almost entirely to D Day exhibits. There's this crazy demonstration there, like the worst low-grade Disney World kind of display known to man. Good luck trying to keep a straight face during that part. It's ancient and hilarious."

Wyatt's heart was jogging ahead of him at an uncanny pace, palms suddenly slick with nerves, all because Lucy Preston was just a smidgen away from laughing in his presence. "Are you sure you can't come too? How am I supposed to appropriately contain myself if there's no outlet for my amusement?"

There it was, another quick dose of longing in her eyes. He'd only seen it for an instant back at the table, a beautiful mirage welling to the surface just a split-second before she'd first found her voice. He'd nearly convinced himself that he'd imagined it, but there was no mistaking that look a second time.

"I'm sure you'll make do," she said after a beat, ripping her gaze abruptly away from him. She nudged a shoulder against the door to the hotel and gave it a good push. "So if you're in, I can get you started on the paperwork. You get a military discount, you know."

The false chirpiness in that last comment had him squirming. "How about ex-military? Do I still get a discount for vet status?"

"What?" Lucy whirled on him, eyes wide. "You - you're not…"

"I work for contract these days," he answered with a sheepish grin. "Currently on Homeland's bankroll, but what else is new, right? Plus Christopher made sure we were set up pretty nicely once it was all said and done, but you wouldn't know that since you haven't touched your bank account in...how long? A year or more?"

He knew exactly how long, but pretending otherwise somehow felt like having the upper hand.

Her face closed up in a clap of silent thunder. "I don't want their money."

She moved quickly, inserting herself behind a cramped desk before he could probe further, not that he needed any clarification on her answer. It was a touchy subject, one he should have known better than to mention.

"Look, I know you're still upset about - "

"Here." She thrust a form across the desk, practically torpedoing it into his hand. "Sign at the bottom, okay? And yeah, you still get the discount."

Wyatt took the paper, glanced around for a pen, only to have her jam one of those at him too with the same driving force. He took the cue and kept his mouth shut, focusing on the waiver in front of him. Once he had all the blanks filled in and a signature scrawled across the line, he slid it back over to her, bending to catch those chestnut eyes, the ones he'd dreamt of for months on end.

"You'll really still be here when I get back? This isn't just a brilliant diversion to give you a head start on your escape?"

She had the nerve to look put out by that accusation. "I'll be here. I just - I need a little time to process all of this, okay?"

"Time," he said with a shallow nod. "You'll have to excuse my crisis of faith at the sound of that word. To you, more time can mean a one-way ticket to another continent."

"Wyatt…"

Lucy sighed, her expression folding. She'd said his name, and not because he was bugging the hell out of her, but because she actually felt bad. Remorse colored her eyes and pulled at her mouth. He'd hit a nerve, one he wasn't sure still existed.

 _Thank_. _God_.

"Guess I'll just have to take your word for it then." He turned for the door, paused with an involuntary sag of his shoulders, glancing back for one last look at her. A look he still believed could be his last. "And in case you're totally pulling one over on me...it really was nice to see you, Lucy."

There was a flicker of her eyebrows, a darkening in her gaze. He didn't wait around for a response, sure that she had no intention of echoing the same notion.

His legs nearly buckled on his way out. The sunlight that greeted him seemed distorted, casting too many long shadows among the trees and awnings, chilling him where it should have provided nothing but warmth. Somewhere in the course of those fourteen months, he'd lost more than a few well-worn memories of Lucy's unreserved laughter or reassuring smile; he'd lost his ability to gauge whether or not she was telling the truth.

And with that realization eating right through him, Wyatt wouldn't be able to shake his queasy pull of doubt until the moment he could walk back through that door and find her eyes again.

* * *

Lucy held it together until she could watch the shabby gray tour van roll away with Wyatt Logan tucked safely inside. The second that van was gone, so was her composure. She slammed the ring-for-service sign onto the desk and prayed desperately for an empty lobby bathroom.

Apparently God was listening, although certain other circumstances definitely indicated otherwise. She crumpled to the floor as soon as she could get the squealing lock flipped into place, knees rocking up to her chest, tears spilling out across her folded arms.

If Rittenhouse had needed Rufus, the conclusion - one that Wyatt had broken to her as gently as he could - was that they were planning something big...something that would require another pilot.

Rufus... _Rufus_ stolen away from his own home, the bright eruptive force of goddamn time travel flashing across the security cameras that he'd installed himself. It shouldn't have been possible, not with both machines dismantled and Rittenhouse's lone pilot being left alone to rot in 1779.

Their last mission had been a success too good to be believed - Wyatt had sidelined Emma with a bullet to the shoulder, Lucy had managed to preserve the Siege of Savannah from her influence, and most importantly, Jiya and Rufus had divided and conquered in their flying duties, bringing both the Mothership and the Lifeboat home in one glorious strike against Rittenhouse.

With no Emma, no time travel, and no immediate uprise in Rittenhouse leadership, their entire team had found themselves to be shockingly obsolete. After a few missions of a far more personal nature - one triumphant, several others that brought nothing but additional layers of painful despair - Homeland Security pulled the plug, disbanding their ragtag group just as abruptly as they'd come together. The parts and blueprints of each machine had been scattered in pieces across multiple classified locations. It was all over in an insubstantial flicker, uprooting Lucy from one dark corner to the next. She was homeless, jobless, _useless_.

It was different for everyone else. Connor did everything he could to keep Rufus and Jiya attached to his next entrepreneurial venture. Denise had earned a well-deserved leave of absence to be spent with her family, Wyatt had a few months to kill before he'd be reassigned, and…

And Garcia Flynn walked off into the sunset with his wife and daughter, basking in the luxury of a reunion that Lucy had been so cruelly denied thanks to Emma's interference. Just one last nail in the coffin that held her shriveled, cracked-beyond-recognition heart.

The blinding luster of so many new beginnings had sent her scurrying for the shadows to lick her wounds, allowing herself a wallowing misery that would have suited her just fine if not for a blue-eyed nuisance who wouldn't be swatted away so easily.

She eventually left him with no choice, though. Deserting in the middle of the night had that effect. She'd finally decided to take the reigns again, to plot her own course, to cast a line that was beyond Wyatt's reach, beyond the reach of every last shard of torment that had attached itself to her from the moment that government agent showed up at her mother's doorstep.

Until now, of course.

It wasn't enough for him to tell her about Rufus. He'd also burdened her with a heart wrenching account of Jiya, how she'd been left devastated and angry and determined. She was leading the charge to bring Rufus home. It was her persistence alone that had impressively - and possibly illegally, though that hadn't been stated explicitly - fused together the pieces of a time machine that Homeland Security had squirreled away more than a year ago. She was the one who'd drafted the most plausible explanation of how Rittenhouse had pulled it off, the only explanation that they seemed to seriously consider as the truth - Emma had either caught up to another version of her time traveling self or an unactivated sleeper had come to her rescue. She'd been biding her time until someone could bail her out from wherever she'd been hiding... _again_.

From there, Jiya had hunted Wyatt down from where he'd been living off the grid, miles away from decent cell phone service. One word of what had happened and he was in, no questions asked.

And Wyatt? His task had been to hunt down Lucy.

So here he was, dropping right out of the sky, shattering whatever tiny truce Lucy had made with this strange, detached life of hers. It was just like him to do that, to manifest himself now like the pain in the ass ghost that she'd never been able to shake, not even in all this time spent apart.

It was adding up too quickly for her fend off another round of sobs. Her friend was in the hands of homicidal maniacs, the same maniacs who'd once claimed she was meant to join their ranks. Whatever it was they wanted with Rufus, the very blood that flowed through Lucy's veins linked her to the same deranged force that held him hostage. She'd convinced herself she'd walked away for good, that she'd never have to climb into another time machine for as long as she lived.

 _Rittenhouse has Rufus_. In the wake of those three devastating words, she could literally feel her resolve crumbling from beneath her.

And then there was Wyatt Logan crossing an entire ocean just to sit down across from her and say something as carelessly catastrophic as, _You're a sight for some very sore eyes, ma'am_. If this day came with a rewind button, she'd be smashing it into pieces with the force of her panic.

Did she even have a choice? Could she say no? Would it really be such a bad idea to do exactly as Wyatt had suggested, to hop on the first train out of Normandy, out of France, maybe out of Europe? It would be the coward's way out, but she wasn't sure she could look him in the eye and tell him no. To stand before him and say that she'd willingly choose to break their sacred trinity, to abandon the team that she had always, _always_ fallen back on…? That seemed impossible. No matter what went on in their personal lives, despite the piercing heartaches they'd suffered, the spiderwebbed-cracks in the foundation of who they once were, Wyatt and Rufus could never be anything less than _Wyatt and Rufus_. No one in the world shared a bond like theirs.

But she couldn't do it, couldn't say yes, and yet she also couldn't bear his look of disappointment. There had only been one way to leave him the first time, to disappear when his back was turned, when his eyes were closed, when he had no chance to talk her out of it. Did she really think she'd be any stronger this time around?

So that was it. She'd betray his trust a second time, and his parting message had been clear. Wyatt wouldn't chase her again. She wasn't getting a third chance.

The bell rang from the lobby, signaling the impromptu end to her pitiful sob fest. Her body was numb from being pretzeled up into herself for too long, but she somehow hobbled up to the sink on shaky legs, splashed some cold water against her hollowed cheeks, and arranged a phony half-smile on her face as she made her way back to the desk.

But as she went through all the usual motions - welcoming a chattery group of guests, booking tours, giving directions for the best crepes and the tackiest souvenirs - one face kept flashing behind her eyes, and it wasn't the sad blue gaze of a man who'd misjudged her yet again.

It was the face of Rufus Carlin, the mental film reel of a broad smile and a booming laugh, both of which might evaporate forever if she chose to keep running from a past that had never quit nipping at her heels.


	3. Now or Never

_a/n: Welcome to chapter 3! Let the angst continue :)  
_  
 _You know that general book disclaimer that goes something like, "names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination" ...? Yeah, well that does not apply here. This chapter is dedicated to the real life Jean Claude (whose name has been slightly altered so the guy doesn't sue me for the whole lotta nothing I'm worth). Merci!_

* * *

"You're still here."

Lucy tried not to wince at the raw-edged astonishment hanging low in Wyatt's voice. It wasn't as if his doubts had been too far off the mark.

"I'm here," she replied dully. "Just like I said I would be."

The amount of visible restraint in his face was like the glare of neon on a dark highway - obvious, unavoidable, cringe-inducing. He was itching to say something, probably to tell her off, but he was reining it in with an incredibly concentrated force of will.

When he did speak, the topic of her flight-risk behavior was dropped altogether. "So you warned me about that awful show at the museum, but somehow didn't think to mention that the tour guide himself would be a total clown. Jean Paul…?"

"Jean Claude," she supplied with a reluctant snicker of laughter.

"Oh, my mistake - Jean _Claude_. Lucy, swear to God, you need to take over this whole enterprise, okay? That guy - "

"That guy is my boss and he'll be popping back in here at any moment, so try keep it down, please."

He smirked, dipping his head to unleash the full gamut of those sparkling blue eyes, an expression that worked like a crowbar against her heart. "All I'm saying is that you could run circles around him out there. He's a mess. You do a better job of explaining things when there's actual gunfire and warfare involved than Jean Pierre does when - "

"Jean _Claude_."

"Whatever. He's a joke."

Lucy wedged her elbows against the desk and let out a long-suffering sigh. "Are you asking for a refund then, sir?"

Wyatt cocked an eyebrow at her. There was probably a dimple involved too, not that she could see it through his shaggy beard. "Sir, huh? I could get used to that."

Color rose quick and unwelcomed across her face. "It's a customer service thing. Don't read into it."

His hands came to rest on the edge of the desk, bringing him far closer than she could reasonably handle without experiencing the threat of heart failure. "The tour was fine, _ma'am_. Would have been better with you there, but otherwise? No complaints. The beaches were definitely the best part...pretty moving, standing right where all the action happened."

"I think so too," she replied quietly, a little surprised at his sudden sincerity.

"Couldn't help but think about my Grandpa…" he smiled softly and gave a quick shake of his head. "The cemetery got me too. I knew we had soldiers buried here, but I had no idea it was so...substantial. Or that the graves were technically on American soil, for that matter."

"See? I told you that you'd like it."

The rapid build of intensity in his expression set her nerves on edge. "Guess you still know me pretty well, huh?"

The gnawing implication in those words didn't go over her head. She might still know him, but he couldn't say the same about her. Not anymore.

Wyatt didn't wait for an answer. He went on in another breath, his eyes too round with something that looked like hope. "So I have it on good authority that you won't be locked up here for too much longer. That was the last tour of the day."

"Well, we usually only do two of them most days, so - "

"Lucy," he interrupted with a deep slide of his voice. "Come on. I'm not really interested in talking about tour times."

She lowered her eyes to the desk and poured all of her energy into keeping herself upright. An afternoon had come and gone, but she was still no more prepared for this decision than she had been when he'd first dropped it into her lap.

"Jiya will be here soon," he said quietly. "We're doing this either way, Luce, but I think we both know that it's gonna be an absolute shitshow without our historian."

 _Luce_. _Our historian_. Two more cracks to the heart.

"Jiya? She's here too?"

"Not yet, but she was scouting out landing spots last time I checked in with her, so - "

Lucy raised her eyes to his, gaping at that choice of words. " _Landing spots_? Tell me she's not coming with the Lifeboat."

"The Mothership, actually. We're flying in style these days."

"Wyatt, she can't - "

He had the gall to laugh at her. "She can. She _is_. You're gonna learn real fast that she's taking zero fucks from anyone right now."

Once again, Lucy's voice had deserted her. Where her ability to speak failed, her head kept on turning, a mechanical back-and-forth motion to portray the insistent _no no no_ streaming through her brain.

"Lighten up, Luce. It's not like she'll be parking it in the middle of the street."

She pinched the bridge of her nose and ground out four very inconsequential words, words that didn't even begin to touch the larger headache that was building beneath the surface. "Quit calling me that."

Wyatt laughed again, but there was no joy in it. "Go figure. Lucy Preston telling me what I can and cannot call her. Some things never - "

"Some things need to change," she groused back before he could finish. "Like hopping from era to era, playing God with people's lives like we - like we have some right to go screwing around - "

Jean Claude came plodding in right then, bringing a screeching halt to her lecture on the costs - the limitless repercussions, the bludgeoning destruction - that came with this curse of theirs. Time travel. Balancing the fate of a nation on their shoulders. Ending lives just as recklessly as they created new ones. Probably not the best conversation for her boss to overhear.

He clapped Wyatt on the back as he approached, his caterpillar of a mustache rolling excitedly beneath his nose as he glanced between the two of them. "Are you here to take my best worker off my hands for the evening, Monsieur?"

There was a knowing gleam in Wyatt's eyes, his gaze never straying from Lucy's even as he addressed the question that hadn't come from her. "Something like that...as long as she agrees to it, of course."

"Of course? _Of course_ , of course!" Jean Claude flew around the desk, lighter on his feet than anyone would have expected of a man who was as round as he was short. "Young love. Go, go. Go a few minutes early, Mademoiselle."

"Yes, Mademoiselle," Wyatt said through a wicked smile. "Let's not keep young love waiting."

He offered his arm, and with both men awaiting her next move in rapt anticipation, Lucy had no choice but to accept.

 _Dammit_.

They were barely out of the door when she jerked her arm away from his, away from his warmth and his strength and the burden of too many merciless memories. His smile didn't fade, not even as she stalked tersely down the stone walkway ahead of him.

"I'll have to leave a letter or something," she called from over her shoulder, "so he doesn't think you kidnapped me when I don't show up tomorrow."

"Wait, so you're really coming with us?" He was taking long strides to catch up, and even from the outermost corner of her peripheral vision, the spike in his enthusiasm was painfully bright.

"Do I get to pack, or should I assume that someone held onto my collection of ratty bunker sweatpants?"

"Seriously? You're really in?" Wyatt reached for her, fingertips skimming the back of her arm before she sped up to leave him hanging.

"Please tell me your new headquarters comes with a bathroom that's actually seen a bottle of Clorox sometime north of the 1960s."

"Lucy - "

She turned on him so fast that there was a near-literal screeching of emergency brakes as he brought himself to a haphazard stop. "This is the last thing I want to do, Wyatt. I think I might actually hate you for coming here, for putting this on me, for - for all of it."

The wildfire effect of her words ravaged his face, leaving a lethal dose of devastation trailing after them.

They stood face-to-face on the sidewalk, a mountain of emotional debris shaking loose between them, chests heaving and mouths ajar until the chime of his cell phone ripped through the cataclysmic silence.

"That would be Jiya with our ride." He tried to smile as he retrieved the phone from his back pocket, but the scrape of his voice was just as desolate as the void in his eyes. "Hope you don't have much packing to do, Professor. History is waiting."

* * *

Her bag was surprisingly small. Disturbingly small, actually.

Of all the things Wyatt should have been considering - like the unbearable tension between them, the risks associated with reopening the seemingly endless crusade against Rittenhouse, or the impossibility that they were already too late to save Rufus - the size of Lucy Preston's suitcase really shouldn't have concerned him. But hell, that wasn't even a suitcase, not really. He'd strapped more provisions to his back for one day in the desert than she'd accumulated in more than a year of living abroad. She'd never struck him as particularly high maintenance, but the sight of her with a single canvas tote strung over her shoulder was pretty damn spartan.

Although maybe it was the blank-slate invincibility in her face that was really selling that impression.

Wyatt had almost stopped her, spun her around into that narrow channel of a staircase and sent her back up to her apartment - a glorified rented room from what he could infer, one that she had pointedly not invited him into - and told her to take a little more time. To pack another book or two, to make sure she wasn't leaving anything of value behind, her favorite sweater or a box of postcards, a collection of trinkets, _something_.

But his best intentions collided with a fortress of words he'd never be able to erase from his mind - _I think I might actually hate you_ \- and that left him immersed in a silence that couldn't be shaken off so easily.

And maybe he was reading it all wrong anyhow. There was something so astonishingly stark in the way she carried herself now, something that implied the new Lucy - the runaway Lucy - was prone to travelling light. A Lucy who didn't collect trinkets or postcards or anything even remotely frivolous. He'd never had a chance to experience what she was really like beyond the front-lines of their ever present mission, but somehow the idea of her _not_ accumulating a few more mementos of a year spent in Europe felt so damn wrong to everything he did know.

He let her take the lead as they wove through the tidy nest of cobbled lanes and smaller alleyways until they were on the outskirts of the village, shadowed by the cheerful chirping of birds. It said a lot about his current mood to admit that their stupid happy chatter was sounding a lot like ridicule to his ears.

Lucy gestured ahead to a small thicket of trees, resigned and maybe even a little impatient to just get this over with. "Okay, I'm guessing she should be - "

"What the hell took you two so damn long?"

The cloaking device fell away and there was Jiya only a few feet ahead, glaring down at them from the lip of the Mothership.

Lucy drew in a shaky little gasp from beside him. "I forgot it did that."

"Sure would have made our lives a hell of a lot easier to have this one all along, wouldn't it? All those times stashing the Lifeboat miles away from where we really needed it, trudging through God knows what after we were already - "

"Save story time for later, Logan. We're already way behind." Jiya flipped her steady gaze between the two of them. It was a brief and curious scan, nothing more. "Lucy."

Jiya nodded once in what was supposed to pass for a greeting and then disappeared into the Mothership. Reunion over.

The uneasiness in Lucy's posture, her eyes, her _everything_ , steepened into full-blown dejection. She'd obviously expected things to be difficult with him, but Jiya…

Jiya was firmly entrenched on his side of the aisle these days, something Lucy clearly hadn't accounted for when she'd agreed to do this. Wyatt actually felt bad for her as she stared emptily at the vacant opening above them, a sentiment that caught him off guard. She'd earned this. She bolted on all of them, Jiya included. What had she expected? A cake and balloons and a 'Welcome Back' banner?

And yet the achingly sympathetic twist in his chest just wouldn't ease up, not even if she'd brought every bit of this cool indifference upon herself.

"I'm not the only one you left behind, Lucy," he said gently, watching as those words played slowly over her pale - and paling further by the second - face.

"You, umm," she swallowed heavily, gaze drifting downward, " you weren't quite so...passively hostile."

 _Yeah, well, she's not quite so in love with you_.

He knew that simple fact made all the difference. He also knew it wouldn't be a welcomed point, not now.

"She'll be fine. There's just a lot at stake, that's all."

Lucy cast doubtful eyes up at him, ones he would stumble right into if he wasn't careful. She was looking to him for something, for reassurance or back up or comfort, and it was going straight to his head even when he knew better than to allow such things. _Shit_.

"Seriously, Lucy. Don't sweat it. We're on the same page about you coming along, so - "

A heap of fabric came flying out of the time machine, nearly pelting him in the face before he could snag it with a quick reflexive movement of his hand. There was another downpour of material in the next second, one that was aimed for Lucy, hitting her squarely in the shoulder and fluttering to her feet, her face ashen and unchanged throughout it all.

"Costumes," Jiya announced about as inanely as possible.

Lucy glanced from Wyatt to the Mothership, then back again. "What? We're jumping now? From _here_?"

Jiya steamrolled past that question, poking her head out with a flat look. "You can take turns changing in here, or...not. Since you've both - ya know - seen everything anyway. Your call."

 _That_ changed Lucy's face in an instant. "Oh my God."

Wyatt sighed, giving himself a quick mental reprimand for not anticipating this exact can of worms exploding in all of their faces. "Lucy can change first. A word, Jiya? Down here please."

The huffing eye roll he got in return was to be expected, but goddammit was he ever underprepared for two of the most headstrong women he'd ever known to be aggravated with him at the same time. He could hold up just fine against either one of them, but being at war with both Jiya and Lucy had him feeling just about as outnumbered and outgunned as he'd ever been.

Just one more reason to get Rufus back where he belonged, _stat_.

Jiya shrugged halfheartedly, one hand braced against the machine to hop down, but Wyatt's attention was diverted as Lucy began to drop back, disappearing from his field of vision.

Terror. That's what he was met with when he twisted sideways to look at her. Her big brown eyes were enormous with muted terror, aimed straight for the opening of the Mothership. "I don't think I can do this."

He grimaced at the tremor tearing through her voice. So far he'd heard indignation, shock, annoyance, even a thread of suffering, but this...this trembling alarm had him up to his ears in ill-advised tenderness.

"Lucy…"

She shook her head, eyes still trained just beyond the spot where Jiya stood, the threshold to a life she'd emphatically crumbled up and tossed away so many months ago.

"Luce," he murmured again, softer this time. He touched her shoulder lightly, half afraid that she'd come back swinging if he dared to let his hand linger. When she remained frozen in place, he tightened his grip just barely, his head ducking to break up her line of sight. "I know, okay? I know you've tried to put all of this behind you. I know how much you hate these machines, hate everything they symbolize, hate…"

 _Me_. _I know that you hate me_.

Where he faltered, Jiya picked right up in his place. To his infinite relief, she suppressed her needle-sharp prickle of disdain just enough to sound a little reminiscent of her old self. "We all hate it. This isn't exactly a vacation for any of us, but it's Rufus and it's happening with or without you. We don't have time to waste."

Lucy said nothing, tucking a chunk of her lower lip between her teeth and looking like a good gust of wind could knock her straight to her knees.

He heard Jiya's impatient sigh from behind him as the silence stretched on. "In or out, Lucy. And bring those clothes if you're coming. You guys will just have to change when we get there."

Wyatt tried to coax a smile out of her as he bent a little closer, his tone too jarringly buoyant to be believed. "At least this one's a little roomier than our old set of wheels, right?"

The derisive snort that split through her expression helped to loosen the vice-like pressure around his heart. He'd take derisive over petrified any day of the week.

"Wyatt, let's go!"

He closed his eyes against a pang of irritation. He knew Jiya had every right to be rushing him along, but the line he was walking between getting Lucy into that fricking white bubble and having her slip through his fingers forever was about as high and thin as a tightrope strung across the Grand Canyon. One wrong move and he'd be plummeting toward a deadly crash.

He tilted forward with a brief bout of insanity, wishing for nothing more than to rest his forehead against hers and whisper that she could trust him.

But he didn't. And she couldn't. Not after the way he'd thrown that trust right back in her face the second his wife had been resurrected from nothing but thin air. Not when the fracture between them had resulted in a chasm that stretched for thousands of miles, a distance that still held firm even as she stood right in front of him.

Wyatt knelt before her, scooped her costume up from the grassy earth, and then straightened to his full height with a sigh. Whatever else he wanted to say to her - that he needed her, that this mission was bound to flop without her, or that he'd thought of her with every damn breath he took in the last year - all died on his lips as he met her eyes. A wisp of a curl was springing loose at her temple, fluttering just slightly at the hint of a breeze. His fingers itched to unfasten the knot at the top of her head, to slide freely through her hair, caressing from strand to strand, tunneling straight through and holding on indefinitely.

Instead he tossed both sets of clothing up into the time machine and climbed in after them, pivoting slowly to watch her with each terrible thud of his heart. A glossy flame of indecision seemed to burn her up from the inside out, leaving her so much worse off than how he'd found her.

He extended a hand down and forced a few gruff words of invitation past the suffocating lump in his throat. "It's now or never, ma'am."


	4. Right, Babydoll?

_a/n: Hey! Welcome to chapter 4! I feel like now would be a good time to confess that this story was borne of my selfish need to see these characters angst it out in a version of events that had them emotionally estranged from each other, which means plot was my secondary priority. I started this off with a bunch of random out-of-order scenes (most of which we still haven't gotten to) that were focused on the push and pull of Wyatt and Lucy being at odds with each other while still harboring a crapload of feelings... So this will not be a wild mind eff of a storyline, ok? Thought it might be worth a disclaimer in case you were hoping for a huge plot twist somewhere down the line. ENJOY ;)_

* * *

The skirt was impossibly narrow, her shoes were all wrong for 1917, and rearranging her hair had been a hellish disaster, but somehow no wardrobe-related protest could overcome the incessant beat of his voice drumming over her again and again - "It's now or never, ma'am."

 _Now or never_.

Never. She really, really should have gone with never.

But it was Wyatt who had offered those two options to her, and somehow her hand had floated up to his, because options never really felt much like options at all where he was concerned. That was the mystery of how Lucy had found herself here - whisked away from Normandy in mere seconds to breathe in the sights and sounds of Providence, Rhode Island instead.

Just as predicted, all willpower had vacated in a hurry once his expectant eyes had locked on hers.

Somehow her hand still hadn't quit tingling from where it had been wrapped up so soundly in his, and now she had the added sensation of his hands on her waist as she hopped down to the ground after changing, another sensory tornado to further wreck her already fragile equilibrium. He'd done it like it was a damn prerequisite, like she'd never come skidding down the front of a time machine without his assistance, as if his head hadn't been shoved so far up his own ass in the beginning of it all to notice that she was one slip away from knocking herself unconscious on a bad dismount. Or that his head and his ass had _both_ been missing altogether for more than a jump or two, leaving her with Flynn as her only crash mat while Wyatt had been too busy chasing his reprogrammed phantom of a wife to do the job.

Nope, shouldn't go there. Not helping. Not now.

Lucy was so busy clearing her head - as well as her expression and the stupid tremor occupying her hands - that she nearly missed the hushed conference happening just ahead of her. The exchange of a pistol passing from Wyatt to Jiya was enough to refocus her ambling attention, and before she could formulate a comment on that odd transfer, Jiya was striding away in the opposite direction, shoulders squared over a steel-straight spine.

"Uh, where are you going?"

When Jiya didn't stop to answer, Lucy pitched her head toward Wyatt instead, chest tightening at the sudden disruption in the norm. "Since when do we split up without even identifying what's going on? Where is she rushing off to? And why did she need a gun? She didn't even change clothes and we - "

"You do realize I can't answer any of these questions if you don't take a breath between them, right?"

" _Wyatt_ ," she bit out harshly, "this is not how we do things."

"I know," he said calmly, clearly hoping to pacify her with a tone that contrasted so softly against her shrill demands. "Jiya and I decided to...well, to make a few judgement calls of our own this time. You and I will run this jump like we usually do, but her priority is Rufus and the other time machine. We're not even sure he'll be here at all, but if he is, splitting up gives us double the chance at spotting him sooner. And gaining control of both time machines is what shut them down last time, so we both feel like that's the Hail Mary we might have to throw again if we can't figure out something else in the meantime."

"And if she takes their time machine without finding Rufus, who's getting us home?" she asked with a disbelieving arch of one eyebrow.

He shrugged loosely, undaunted. "She'll come back eventually. We have a few protocols in place if something like that happens."

"Well, sure sounds like the two of you have it all wrapped up on your own, don't you?"

"Hey now," he returned with a glint of a smirk. "Don't be like that. You weren't around for the strategy sessions, but that doesn't make you any less of a ball-busting brainiac, okay? We're officially on your turf now, so go ahead - call out the game plan."

She cut her eyes across the gently sloping terrain, mystified by the realization that Jiya was already completely out of sight. "She's really going to be fine on her own?"

His deep rumble of a laugh instantly brought Lucy's gaze back around to him. "With the mood she's in, I'd be scared shitless to cross hairs with her."

"But - "

"She's armed, she knows what she's doing, and she's taking no prisoners. She's - well, she's far more prepared for this than you realize."

Lucy stiffened, feeling more and more baffled - and excluded - by the second. "Meaning?"

Wyatt hesitated for only a moment, then blew through her question with a noncommittal shake of his head. "Nothing worth getting into right now. Later, okay?"

She wanted to hedge against that, to dig her heels in and insist for better, but he was already taking her arm and guiding her forward, his other hand plopping a fedora over his head as they trudged through the dewy grass of early evening.

"So what's the deal, Professor? Any big events shaking down Providence today?"

"I don't know."

"C'mon, you always know," he prompted with a smug sideways smile.

Several past failures buzzed through the forefront of her brain. Moments she'd been way off-base in her assumptions, too slow to piece it all together, inadequate. Times her own knowledge had been bested by Flynn or Mason, or worse yet, her double-dealing mother. In a voice that was painfully anemic, she found herself shrinking away from Wyatt's absurd sense of confidence. "No, I don't. I really, really don't."

"You don't have a guess?" he pressed a little more insistently. "Not even a hunch or - "

"Nothing good, okay?" She saw him flinch just marginally from the corner of her eye, clearly not anticipating the snapping tension in her response. His hand fell away from her arm, allowing Lucy to force a purifying breath before she spoke again. "There's an influenza epidemic around here in another few months, but I don't think that's a concern for now. I'm guessing we're less than an hour from Newport, and there's always a revolving door of wealth and notoriety there, but no one specific comes to a mind as an definite mark. Same goes for Brown - obviously a notable school and it's right here in Providence, but nothing from this year stands out to me."

Wyatt was nodding along, eager for more...and then left waiting. "Okay, so we have the flu, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, and privileged Ivy League punks. Anything else?"

"I'm a little rusty, alright? And I didn't exactly have time to do a Google search before we left, now did I?"

He paused at the first crop of buildings they came to, his brow furrowed as he turned to face her head on. "Look, I know you're not my biggest fan right now. It's cool, you have your reasons."

Where she tried to interrupt - to say what, she had no earthly idea - he forged ahead without batting an eye.

"But don't twist that around into thinking I'm somehow the one who's being short with you. I'm not. I don't expect you to know everything, okay? Not every jump comes with a giant neon sign for what Rittenhouse intends to do, especially not since Emma took over. Cut yourself a break."

"I...I just…"

The apology he deserved died somewhere in her throat. Probably because he deserved a much, much bigger one for things they weren't even discussing at the moment.

"It's a lot to handle and I asked you to dive right in. I get it. Just don't..." he sighed, turning aside to scan the streets unfurling before them, "...don't go thinking you have something to prove here. I'm already convinced. You're the best there is, so if you're not sure why we're here, then we figure it out together."

The only thing he should have been convinced of was her ability to go tearing off to the four corners of the earth at a moment's notice, but if he was somehow able to compartmentalize that away for the time being, Lucy could make the slightest effort to pull herself together too.

She nodded a little spinelessly, trying to summon a forgotten version of herself who could tackle this tiny obstacle without breaking a sweat. "So I guess we just hit the streets and see if we can dig up leads on...on Emma? It _is_ Emma, right?"

The smallest twitch of his mouth had her regretting that question in a heartbeat. Emma may have been at the helm last they saw her, but more often than not, it was Jessica who was only a step or two behind her. Jessica, who had remained as sturdy and athletic as she had ever been. Jessica, a woman who managed to never even looked bloated, let alone like a person who was supposedly carrying a whole other life inside of her. Jessica, an innocent who had been ruthlessly exploited; a golden-haired monster who had done plenty exploiting of her own.

"Yeah," Wyatt said with an uncomfortable clearing of his throat, "probably Emma since...well, mostly since it's assumed that their time machine was recovered from the past. There's been no breach of security in our time and she was the only one who got stranded in Savannah. Can't imagine she'd find her way back just to let someone else call the shots now."

They eyed each other warily for just a second too long when Lucy felt the shift in his expression, sensing an incoming barrage of something she wasn't ready to hear. She nodded ahead at the first move of his jaw and left him to follow after her.

No confessions, no explanations, no Jess talk. They'd done all of that before, and it hadn't ever been enough to patch what was broken between them. She didn't see how it could end any differently now.

He fell in step next to her without another word. One bumpy walkway solidified into a coiling side street, and from there they were weaving their way into town.

"Not exactly the snot-faced accommodations I'd expect for an Ivy League town," Wyatt mumbled as they passed their third or fourth boarded-up window, broken glass crunching underfoot.

"I think Brown is actually on the other side of the river, and - " she worked to ignore his steering hand on her back as they sidestepped a huddle of dirt-smudged boys, but the break in her concentration had her stammering foolishly. "And, um…"

"...And what?"

She kept her gaze straight ahead, flames of mortification surely licking right up her neck. "And there are pockets of hardship just about anywhere. Organized crime was taking off in New England right around this time. It was worse in the bigger cities of course, but there were early associations between the Providence crime family and the more notable activity taking place in Boston. The two families actually merged at some point down the line, although that union won't be in play anytime soon."

"All read up on your mafia lore, huh?" he asked with a tug of admiration in his voice.

One trivial slice of information and suddenly he was acting like she'd ended world hunger or discovered the cure for cancer, an unjustified echo of _you're the best there is_ looping through her head again. God help him if he really believed that.

"Bits and pieces, that's all. And it won't be as dramatic as what you've seen in movies, not around here anyway. Mostly racketeering and gambling if I had to guess, and then obviously a whole lot of bootlegging in a few more years."

"Any chance Emma would be after something here, then?" He gestured at the intersection before them, several dubious storefronts all glaring each other down from opposing corners. "If these _Godfather_ wannabes are in the early stages of getting their shit together, then there's still a chance to make an unexpected power grab or shake up some result that's a decade or two down the line, right?"

"Worth a shot," she admitted with a shrug. "If nothing else, I'd imagine they'd take notice of someone like Emma walking down the street. It would kind of be their business to know who's coming and going, and she's not exactly known for blending in."

His short sizzle of a laugh struck her without warning, reeling her in for quick whirlwind of uninvited warmth. "True. Not a subtle bone in her body, is there?"

There was a plodding beat between them, one where they tentatively shared matching grins that echoed of moments long lost...moments where the pop and crackle of easy banter came as naturally as breathing.

Wyatt took the lead from there, moving decisively from one shop to the next, most of which were closed for the day or boarded shut indefinitely. Their last stop was a neatly kept brick building that stood slightly apart from the rest, the word _Restaurant_ stenciled above the door in simple block letters.

"Shall we?"

At her nod, Wyatt was drawing her inside with a hand threading awkwardly through her arm, his grip landing somewhere between holding her hand and just dragging her after him like a ball and chain. Lucy shot a cagey look sideways, curious - and truthfully, more than a little irritated - at the sudden imposition of being on a leash. "What are you - "

"I think this might be our place," he murmured with a pasted-on smile. "Don't look now, but we've got a few young Pacinos on our hands."

Her eyes were skidding to the back of the room in spite of his warning, which caused his fingers to clasp tighter around her.

"I said _don't_ look."

"Everyone looks when they're told not to," she retorted under her breath. "That's just human nature."

He was pulling her past a few chattering tables, his expression remaining convincingly light even when his words spilled out of him in terse contradiction. "If these guys are for real, you've gotta be cool."

"Are you implying that I'm not usually cool?"

There was no reply aside from a soft chuckle, but his scrunched brow and slanted smirk spoke for him.

"Okay okay," she relented begrudgingly. "But I _can_ be cool."

"Perfect. Now would be a good time to channel that, alright?"

There wasn't much of a chance to counter that request. They were weaving deliberately past the last row of tables, Wyatt's gaze casually flicking from up and down the room, and then they were abruptly thrust into the spotlight.

"Hey bimbo, where ya headed?"

Wyatt's eyes cut to hers, his feet freezing on the spot. "Did someone seriously just call you that?"

"No, you," she whispered hastily. "It doesn't mean the same thing here. It's more like..tough guy."

A grin climbed to the corners of his lips as he turned to face a booth full of menacing onlookers. "How's it - uh, how can I help you?"

"I was just about to ask you the same thing," the man on the end warbled in reply. "You look like you're making a run for our back room, and nothin's open for business back there. Care to explain, pal?"

"Thought I saw someone I knew coming through here, but maybe I was mistaken."

"Maybe you were," said one of the scrawnier guys in the middle. "Helluva boner if that's the case."

Lucy didn't need prompted that time. One glimpse at the rapid bobbing motion in Wyatt's throat and she was whispering in his ear again, this time with a dash of amusement. "Also not the same as...well, you know. He just means a mistake."

"You tell your lady she's allowed to speak up," said the same man again, two very dominant teeth protruding over his lip. "C'mon, the both of you, come have a seat."

She scanned the sliver of space that was left on the edge of the booth and tried to catch Wyatt's eye, but he'd perked up immediately at the offer, not a trace of hesitation in his expression. "Really? You don't mind?"

"Sure. Tell us about your friend, the one you thought you saw. Maybe we can lend some help."

It was the first guy who'd spoken again, the one who kept dipping his eyes a little lower each time he regarded Lucy, which was far more often than the situation warranted seeing as Wyatt was the one doing all the talking.

Lucy eyed the booth with the fakest smile she'd ever produced - a true accomplishment, all things considered - and shook her head stiffly. "I don't know...looks like they're just about maxed out here."

"We can squeeze in just fine," Wyatt announced loudly - obnoxiously, really - with his thumb pressing against the inside her of her wrist. "Right, babydoll?"

 _Babydoll_. The minute they had Rufus back in the present where he belonged, Wyatt Logan was a frickin' dead man.

"Wyatt," she muttered uneasily, wriggling her arm in protest.

His thumb moved in another meaningful sweep over her skin. The message was clear - they needed this. She was the one who'd suggested as much, telling him that this crowd would be a good source for scoop on Emma if she'd passed through here. He wasn't letting her out of it, not even if she was going down kicking and screaming.

The burly man on the end looked her over again, more and more blatant in his interest with each passing sweep of his beady eyes. "Don't be shy. Who needs breathin' room, gorgeous?"

That comment brought an entirely different tension into Wyatt's hold, and while Lucy hardly needed him to go into guard dog mode over one gag-worthy line, that didn't keep her from relishing in his discomfort. Served him damn right for playing it this way.

No one else would have noticed the quick ruffle of his forehead as he worked out his game plan, but she'd had seen it too many times before to miss it now. Too bad the game plan itself wasn't nearly as clear to her watchful eye. He'd made up his mind in a flash and was tugging her along for the ride, sliding in next to that rat-faced perv without releasing Lucy's wrist. She practically fell across Wyatt's knee until he corrected her frantic momentum, his arm moving to cinch around her waist, a hand guiding both of her legs over one of his own. The other half of his body formed a barrier between her and the rest of their greasy tablemates, seemingly using himself as a means of protecting her in case anyone decided they couldn't resist the temptation to get a little handsy beneath the table.

There was a round of hearty laughter, the result of an entire table of womanizing bastards all losing their shit over Wyatt yanking her sideways into his lap like a ragdoll, but her anger just about died away when his gaze drifted to hers. An apology, intimate and private and as sincere as could be, lingered in his solemn blue eyes.

Then - _goddamn him_ \- he moved in closer, skimmed his nose across her cheek, and inhaled deeply. "Sorry. Feel free to yell at me later."

Lucy did her best to maintain a tone that was all business, but her whole body was buzzing at the sound of that gravelly whisper and she could barely remember to breathe. "As if I need your permission."

Wyatt chuckled close to her ear, bringing a provoking prickle of his beard along with him. "You never have, have you? I've always liked that about you."

She shivered. _Hard_. He had the nerve to rub a hand up and down her arm as if it was nothing but a chill in the air that had brought on the swarm of goosebumps.

Someone shoved an overflowing pint down the table and Wyatt caught it deftly, never once relaxing his grip in Lucy's waist. "Cheers, fellas."

Now she was the one willfully ducking her face close to him, if only to conceal the exasperated roll of her eyes from a booth full of misogynistic douchebags who were all eagerly crashing their glasses against his.

It didn't escaped her notice that no one had offered her a drink. Apparently it didn't escape Wyatt's either, not if the way he nudged his mug closer to her and squeezed a hand just beneath her ribs was any indication. The beer looked about as appetizing as rainwater in a ditch, but with her feet swept off the floor and her whole side lodged against the warmth of his body, alcohol seemed to be her only deliverance from the quick spread of insanity that flickered from one nerve ending to the next.

"My girl here is lookin' for her cousin," he relayed to their sordid audience. "A redhead, few years older, bit of the devil in her eyes. Might be traveling with an entourage. Seen anyone like that 'round here?"

She had to give him credit. Wyatt's ability to sound offhandedly convincing in an era that wasn't his own had definitely improved. Didn't change the fact that this act of his was driving her absolutely bonkers, and one experimental sip of that sudsy room-temperature pint failed to divert a speck of her discomfort. She hated this.

"A redhead, huh? Pretty as the brunette in your lap?"

Another voice chimed in, this one just as slimy as the last. "Tryin' to swap cousins on the sly, are ya?"

Her eyes were actually going to roll out of her head. It seemed like a physical impossibility, a reckless hyperbole if there ever was such a thing, and yet no amount of white-knuckled deep breathing could diffuse the violent exasperation twitching beneath her eyelids.

Wyatt cleared his throat above the heckling, the side of his head inching nearer until it could graze against hers. "Not a chance. Only a goddamn fool would take his eyes off the one I've got."

The laughter died down gradually, a few more smartass remarks drifting past Lucy's ears before they were done having their fun, but it was hard to process anything over the quiet roar of what Wyatt had just said. The increased pressure of his solid arm surrounding her revved up the accelerated thump in her heart, a feeling that he - and no one else, not ever - had always been able to evoke inside of her chest. There had been a gruff note to what he'd said, a chastised recoil, a genuine apology that was squeezing every drop of emotion out of her.

He'd said it before. He had told her again and again that he'd made the worst mistake imaginable when he lost his head over Jessica. It had been a softly swirling refrain that floated over every jump they made after Jess had defected, a hollow-eyed plea laced into each gaze he sent Lucy's way. It was repeated on the night he'd invited her to stay in his apartment, the night she lost all sense and allowed a little bit of Scotch to turn into a monumental error in judgement.

Apparently he still wasn't done telling her. One nervous glance sideways and she had her answer. His contrite heart had leapt up into his eyes, shining too vividly. Too poignantly.

She couldn't stomach it. Not when she'd finally accepted that long-standing apology so many months ago, finally accepted _him_ , only to toss it all away a handful of hours later. How the hell could he still think that he was the one who needed forgiveness?

"I need a minute."

It was out of her mouth before she could cushion it with something that sounded even remotely appropriate to her current situation. It wasn't a request fitting of the empty-headed pair of legs these assholes wanted her to be. It was Lucy Preston telling Wyatt Logan that she couldn't cope with him and his proximity and the unnerving perfection of how he smelled and felt and talked. It was an eject button on the unbalancing security that somehow still accompanied the feel of his arms around her, the stability of his body, the rupture of electricity that came with his touch.

She had to get away from him. Now.

He grappled to keep her steady as she scrambled off of him and out of the booth. Never one to hold her back, but always there to hold her up.

"Lucy?"

"I'll…" she blinked toward the set of doors just a few feet away, struggling to make her lips form such a simple excuse, "...umm, the restroom. Powder room. I'll only be a minute."

She was boiling over with embarrassment as she fled from his puzzled look of concern. She'd made a lot of stupid mistakes since their first trip to the Hindenburg, but a full-blown meltdown over nothing but Wyatt being nice, Wyatt _complimenting_ her…? Absurd. Absolutely pathetic.

It wasn't the painstaking effort of someone who'd dolled herself up for an undercover cameo in 1917 that greeted her in the bathroom mirror. Instead she saw the same colorless reflection of Normandy, the woman who cowered at the idea of rejoining a noble fight, the one who was so terrified of her past that she'd almost ducked out again after giving her word that she'd stay. Her eyes were dull, forehead etched with fret, an empty vacuum where there was once life and conviction and tenacity.

Either she would find a way to make herself do this for Rufus or she was going to tank the whole thing. Her screw-ups posed a real danger to him, to Wyatt, to Jiya, to herself. She had to resurrect some mediocre imitation of the teammate she'd once been or they'd all find themselves in early graves.

She stared back at herself until her face was smooth, untroubled. Until she could take her spot next to Wyatt - or on _top_ of Wyatt, dammit - without so much as an eyelash fluttering out of place. If she was so determined to keep her distance this time, she better start on the inside job of convincing herself that she was stronger than this.

And she was. Or she had been. There had been a day where she was known for pushing and debating and pushing some more until she got exactly what she wanted. She'd gone up against Wyatt hundreds of times before, called him on his shit, overruled his orders with a perspective he'd never consider on his own; most importantly, she was in the habit of winning when it came to him. If she was capable of outmaneuvering his bullheadedness in the midst of a battle, she could certainly outmaneuver him in whatever the hell was going on in her heart...right?

Sure. Maybe. She'd damn well give it her best effort. At least it was a starting point, a place to drop anchor in the mental-emotional storm that raged inside of her.

Her newfound sense of calm lasted as long as it took to inhale deeply and get a hand wrapped around the doorknob.

Gunshots, a whole orchestra of them, were suddenly playing their brutal symphony right outside the fortress of her escape. Some of them were coming _through_ that fortress, sending her to her knees with her arms braced over her head.

And then there was a low grunt she'd recognize in any century. _Wyatt._

Calm had officially gone out the window.

* * *

 _Another update will be coming soon! In the meantime, reviews are life._


	5. Cable Car

_a/n: mega thanks to everyone who has been sticking with me on this one. Your encouragements means so much more than you know!_

* * *

He was really getting too damn old for this.

There had been a day when that thought would have been depressing as all hell, but these days...these days, a quieter life - one where he wasn't crawling between bistro tables with a few shards of a beer stein embedded in his face - sounded far more appealing than ever before.

But if he had to choose between a few more months holed up in the Sherwin family cabin or dodging open fire in 1917 with Lucy at his side, 1917 won out every single time. Just about anything would win out if she was part of the deal.

The problem with that logic was that she _wasn't_ currently at his side, and until she was, his anxiety level was through the roof and halfway into the stratosphere.

There was a break in the melee then, one that Wyatt had been expecting to come eventually, because God knows no one can really go on shooting forever without running their son-of-a-bitch mouths for a little while.

"That cousin a'yours ran scared before we could deal with her properly. Someone needs to take the heat for all this meddling goin' on today. Looks like have ourselves an example to be made."

Wyatt eyed his path to the bathroom for what felt like the hundredth time since anarchy had broken loose, and finally - in what hopefully wasn't the result of some desperately wishful thinking - the door was cracked just the slightest bit open. He couldn't see Lucy through the slim breach in the doorway, but God did he ever hope she could see him. Wyatt signaled with two fingers toward the back of the restaurant, then shifted to his knees and flexed both hands until they were sculpture-still. He'd already taken two opponents out, maybe three. There was no room for choking now.

"Don't worry about your sweetheart, fella. We'll take care of her. A face like that, she'll do just fine around here."

That remark almost had him up to his feet much too soon. No...another step from that loose-lipped shitface, another creak of a floorboard, and then…

"Ya gonna hide all day, or - "

 _Shoot_ , he answered silently. He was going to shoot.

In another blink, Wyatt was unloading half a clip from where he crouched behind an overturned table, using his vantage point to nail Mr. Shit Talker right where it counted. If he hadn't spawned any Shit Talker Juniors by now, he certainly wouldn't have a chance after today.

He spun sideways before his first target had even hit the floor, unleashing another spray of bullets in a pulsing tempo that was faster and wilder than anything their antiquated weapons could match.

Another bastard went down just as Wyatt regained his footing and began backing his way toward the restroom. " _Lucy_ , go now!"

A squeal of door hinges and the clipped outcry of heels thudding against hardwood was all it took to soothe the dangerously galloping rhythm of his heart. His last few shots were delivered with a flourishing grin. Maybe he'd been wrong about that 'too old' thing. Whooping a whole posse of grease-slicked clowns had turned out to be far more satisfying than he'd remembered.

He came crashing through the mystery door right behind Lucy, relieved to find that the next room was exactly what he'd anticipated it would be - an unassuming kitchen with three employees cowering to the ground and one unobstructed doorway, a miraculous exit that was theirs for the taking.

With one hand still aimed backwards and the other on Lucy's back, Wyatt was pushing them through to an empty alley just as the returning fire picked up speed again. He chose a direction and went with it, nudging her back once more before letting his hand fall away. "C'mon, this way."

She didn't move, wide eyes overtaking her whole face. "You...your face, Wyatt. You're hurt."

He touched his brow absently, coming away with a thin smear of blood. "It's nothing, alright? Surface scratches, nothing to worry about."

"I heard you. It sounded like…"

"Lucy?" He stepped squarely into her space when she failed to regroup on her own, taking her hand and holding it to his chest. "We have to go, okay? _Now_."

She nodded in the opposite direction, giving his hand a small tug. "The cable car."

"What?"

"The cable car," she said again, the fight to keep calm playing blatantly across her face. "It's the other way. I saw tracks earlier. We can get away faster if we have transportation, right?"

Wyatt was moving before she'd even gotten it all out. He didn't give a damn which way they went, and her plan was a whole lot more grounded in practical reasoning than his own haphazard impulse to just bolt in whichever way the wind blew them. "There are cable cars in New England?"

"The Providence Cable Tramway was the only one of its kind in this area," Lucy answered between hurried breaths. "Although there were - "

Her foot lost traction on a loose piece of gravel, bringing an abrupt end to the lesson. Wyatt fought to keep her upright, and just when he thought he had the situation under control, a whistling bullet split the trim of a doorway just inches from his head.

"Uh, Lucy, a little faster, please!"

"Try doing this in a skirt and these shoes and then we'll talk!"

He propelled them both around a corner and let go of her for long enough to line up a risky shot around the edge of the building. He spared himself just a second to grin at Lucy as he twisted back to face her again - her shoulders pitching, hair falling all around her flushed cheeks, a gorgeous mess. "Tell me you haven't missed this."

Her jaw actually dropped. "You're sick. You have to be. There's no other logical explanation for - for that."

Before he could defend himself - not that he really had any rational defense prepared, other than 'I've missed _you_ ' - there was a fortunate rumbling sound in the distance. "I think our getaway car has arrived."

Her eyes lit up, beautiful hope brightening her face. "The Tramway."

"And not a moment too soon."

She didn't hesitate to take his hand when he offered it again, and then they were clattering down the street together, an unrivaled team united once more.

He hadn't been kidding. He _had_ missed this, even the viciously chaotic parts that had them fleeing for their lives, because it meant having something as simple as her hand inside of his. Even better was when the mission objective had them arm-in-arm as they ambled through a glitzy Hollywood party, mouths interlocked in a ramshackle Arkansas cabin, or hell, he'd even take knee-to-knee across the crowded aisle of the Lifeboat, pleading with the universe to allow them another safe passage on their way home.

And if he truly had his choice of cosmically ordained opportunities, he might put top prize on having the length of Lucy's soft silhouette slotted against him as they snuck their way back onto the grounds of the Darlington 500.

"Wyatt?"

She was peering up at him now, pale and unmistakably frazzled, her grip on his fingers becoming increasingly brutal. She jerked her head in the direction of the awaiting trolley, the one he'd run after on autopilot while fantasizing over their greatest hits.

 _Shit_. Preston was going to murder Logan if he didn't get his ass in gear.

He turned his head to the side and did what he could to mop up his battered face with the back of his sleeve, not that he had a chance of seeming overly presentable either way. "I'm ready if you are, ma'am."

"But we have to - "

The operator held up his hand right as Wyatt was blustering past her protest, parroting the same words that he'd apparently just ignored from Lucy. "You have to pay the fare upfront, sir."

Lucy's voice came piping in from half a step below him. "We, um, I'm sorry, but we don't have - "

"We do." Wyatt dug his free hand through his pocket and produced a few coins, waiting for the operator to take what they owed before ushering Lucy up the short set of steps.

"How...where did that - "

"Swiped it before all hell broke loose back there," he answered as he steered her into the last bench at the back of the trolley car, not relinquishing his grip on her hand until he was crowded in next to her. "Thought it might come in handy."

She glanced down to where his leg was pressed tightly to hers, lower lip shaking just slightly as her listing brown eyes returned to his. "You stole it from - from one of _them_? Tell me that's not what this entire fiasco was all about, Wyatt."

"It wasn't. You don't think I'm any smoother that? Geez."

"So Emma got to them first?" she asked with eyes frantically bounding back and forth, not entertaining his dig for a compliment. Maybe she hadn't really heard it at all judging by the way she seemed incapable of focusing her attention for more than a second or two at a time. "Turned them against us before we…before - "

"Breathe, Lucy." He demonstrated slowly, deliberating over one long inhale before letting out an equally weighted exhale.

She nodded, complying with his request as best as she could. Her shaking fingers curled against his lapel, physically latching on as if she could absorb his steadiness through osmosis.

Wyatt waited another moment, studying the gradual slackening of her shoulders, watching the panic drain away from her clouded eyes. "She didn't turn them against us. She turned them against _herself_. Must have overplayed her hand or something, but either way, associating ourselves with her is what got us into hot water. That whole cousin thing...I don't even know where that came from, but it was a shitty idea."

"No, it wasn't...it was smart, Wyatt."

"Judging by our current predicament, 'smart' is not the word I would choose."

Lucy's gaze sharpened, landing on him with a revived sense of purpose. "Well I would. Nine times out of ten, that story would have gone off without a hitch. It's not your fault that she blew this one to smithereens all on her own."

No amount of strained mental discipline could bring his brain back into order. Not with her face so close and her palm resting over his heart. Not when she was defending him. Not when she sounded just like the teammate who'd rallied him out of so many tough spots that came before this one.

She shifted gears on her own, brows coming together to form a troubled V. "If they knew who Emma was from the beginning, why drag out the inevitable? No one said a word when you first described her."

"For the same reason a cat plays with a mouse, I'd imagine. Eating right away takes all the fun out of it."

Her look of disgust had him reeling with silent laughter. Or nearly silent, because even his most valiant effort couldn't fully mask the throaty chuckle that came at her expense.

"Yeah, real hilarious," she muttered through barely parted lips. She released the swatch of his jacket that she'd been clutching so tightly and slid backward, only to come up against the immediate boundary of the window ledge.

"This isn't much of an improvement over that booth, is it?"

Lucy scowled out at the darkening blur of passing streets. "It's almost as if this entire jump has been engineered to shove us together."

He allowed himself the briefest flurry of warmth as he reveled in the memory of what had happened in that restaurant - her body so snug against his, the illusive scent of her, the way she felt in his arms...all of it stampeding over him with a well-nourished nostalgia. He'd dreamt of her too often in the year they'd lost. Only a few minutes of holding her in his lap and Wyatt was reawakened to pieces of himself he hadn't even realized were missing.

Which was how he found himself coming on far too strongly now, overconfident in the baseless assumption that she had to be following the same breadcrumbs of welcomed déjà vu. "Is that really such a bad thing?"

That question only succeeded in adding to her flustered aggravation. "Can't say that I'd call it _good_."

"Lucy - "

"You really should have shaved before we came here, you know. You look like a vagrant."

The emotional ping-pong she'd just served up left him stammering. "I - I wasn't even thinking of - "

"It's not common in most time periods to let your facial hair go like that," she continued with an obstinate tilt of her head. "Respectable men are either cleanly shaven or sport a neatly trimmed mustache, maybe a - "

"Got it," he interrupted sharply. "I'll get it under control the next time I have a razor and a sink at my disposal."

Lucy shook her head, disapproving eyes dancing along the lines of his face. "Even that scruffy thing you used to do, Wyatt...it's not exactly the norm for any time period up until - I don't know, until Brad Pitt or someone equally pretentious decided that only shaving once every three days was socially acceptable."

"Are you seriously _this_ invested in a lecture about facial hair, or are you actually using this random-ass tirade to deflect from the fact that you're still just as into me as I am into you? And if so, then maybe you should just say what you - "

" _Wyatt_ ," she cut in through clenched teeth. "Enough."

"So what, you're _not_ still into me? Because that scene you created back in the restaurant made it seem like you were experiencing one hell of a reaction to an innocent bit of playacting. Aren't you usually the one who goes all in on that bullshit?"

"If it was all bullshit to you, I don't even know why you're bothering to ask."

She was being so goddamn haughty, emphatically reprising the role of the uptight professor without an agreeable thought in her head, a gut-lurching reverse to every bit of progress they'd ever made with each other.

But behind it all, if Wyatt forced himself to reconsider his impulse to seethe and retaliate and give credence to every reckless hothead instinct that was warring for release, there was the ice-cold realization that she was still running scared. She would continue to dodge his praise and pick stupid fights for as long as he let her get away with it. Even now, caged in and incapable of physically moving another inch, Lucy was sprinting away from any little token of the relationship they'd once shared.

So he didn't fire back. He didn't corner her either. He simply settled back in his seat and folded his hands together in symbolic surrender.

"It wasn't bullshit to me," he said softly, keeping his eyes aimed ahead and voice even. "And if it sounded like I meant that part about innocent play acting, I didn't. It meant something to me too. I'm not that good at pretending, especially not with you."

"Can we just…" her uneasy sigh fleetingly brought her arm to his, a too short tease to keep him off-balance, "...table this whole thing for the moment?"

"Yeah," Wyatt agreed quietly. "Consider it tabled. For now."

Those last two words had a tactile effect on her. He could feel it in every brittle nuance of movement as she rearranged herself higher in the seat. She was steeling herself against him. He could say _for now_ all he wanted, but she was dead set on _never_.

* * *

Lucy couldn't face him. Couldn't handle another second of staring at that stubborn trickle of blood sliding down from his eyebrow, the matching smattering of red further down his cheek, the dark speckles that were matted through his beard.

There had been a very real part of her that thought he'd gone down for good in the dining room of that restaurant, and that same part of her had taken control for far too long. It had encouraged the familiar fusion of their hands as they were chased from one side street to the next. It was the reason she'd reached for him as they sat side-by-side on the cable car, clinging to his jacket as she stomped down a threatening wave of panic. The part of her that had whispered how easy it would be for her to lay her head across his shoulder and let him talk her through the paralyzing fear that kept cropping up at every turn.

Thank God another instinct - a louder, more determined one - had taken over instead.

It was better this way. Less talking, less interacting, less…less temptation. Sealing herself off from him would make this whole endeavor so much easier. The sooner Wyatt got the hint, the sooner they could both move on. Get Rufus and get out - that was all she was here for, and the more often she repeated it under her breath, the more likely it was to stick in her head. Repetition, memorization, internalization...the methods of learning that were as common to her as walking and talking. Completely second nature, no problem whatsoever.

Or so she thought, other than one small hiccup. She'd staggered over every little dip and divot in the sidewalk until they were finally back in the field where they'd begun, which meant walking was probably not the example she should go with if she wanted to prove how simple it would be to pry Wyatt out of her head...and her heart. Especially since each emergence of her inner-klutz meant Wyatt was reaching out to hold her steady until her damn feet could stop betraying her.

He was surprisingly at ease with the Mothership's inner workings once they were within range, disabling the cloaking device on his own, then scaling his way up to its entrance and tapping some sort of signal out onto a device Lucy didn't recognize.

"There," he said with a reserved smile. "That should speed things along."

"Speed what things along?"

Wyatt crouched down to help her as she approached, but Lucy kept her arms locked firmly across her chest, making no move to match his efforts. He shook his head and dropped into a sitting position, legs dangling out over the edge as he began to explain, a foot dusting ever so subtly against her thigh.

"Jiya's latest creation," he answered with a tip of his head back at the tablet-style mechanism that he'd reattached to the interior wall. "I just call it the pager, but that's a poor man's understanding of what she really did. Its range is limited of course, and - "

"You're telling me she's wandering around out there with a modern communication device? We're still a few years off from the first commercial radio station, and Jiya brought a _pager_? That is an unbelievably stupid risk in 1917, let alone in years that are even further back than this."

"She's careful, Lucy. It won't be an issue."

"Won't be an issue?" she wheeled back, feeling crimson anger rising higher. "God, Wyatt, why did you even ask me to come? I'm not supposed to question anything, no one gives a damn how I feel about splitting up or using tech long before its time, and I - I…"

"You what?" he asked quietly.

"I'm no good at this. I never really was, and I'm definitely not any better at it now."

Wyatt dipped a hand against her temple, sliding a strand of loose hair back behind her ear. "You know better than that. I'm not going to sit here and remind you of the hundreds of times you've saved my ass, Lucy. I only do one good pep talk per jump, and you used yours up at the beginning. Try again later."

She sucked in a shallow breath, restless at the thought of letting him touch her like that...and yet even more restless at the thought of shaking him off. "You think this is a joke?"

"Of course not." Now both of his palms were straying along her neck, holding her in place as he loomed over her with stormy blue eyes. "I know you're - "

"You rang?"

Lucy rocketed out of his grasp at the first syllable that left Jiya's mouth, turning abruptly to find a dubious expression bouncing back over her. "Well that was certain effective, if not a total violation of every rule we're supposed to abide by, but hey - welcome back."

"Still bitching about rules, I see." She sauntered right past Lucy's gaping look of offense and drew herself up next to Wyatt with practiced ease. "Did you two get anything done while I was gone? Or did you just stand around in this field all day, alternating between arguing like petulant children and staring stupidly into each other's eyes?"

Wyatt - the damn traitor - actually chuckled at that pointed accusation, mirth flowing out of him freely. "I'm down a hat and a few chunks of skin, but I suppose that means nothing to you, Marri."

She smiled back at him, a sunshiny wonder that had Lucy desperately longing for the friendship she'd too readily abandoned. "Sorry about your pretty face, Logan. I know how much you depend on those looks of yours."

He laughed louder, clapping her across the shoulder once he was up on his feet again. "Damn straight. It's all I really have to fall back on in life."

"If only you didn't mean that."

"Don't be jealous. It's not a good look on you."

She bopped him back that time, matching his widening grin. "What you really mean is that it would be a better look on _you_."

Jiya ducked further into the machine, presumably abandoning their ribbing session to begin the usual pre-flight routine, which left Lucy alone to once again question why the hell they had even bothered dragging her along when they were capable of having such a damn fun time on their own.

The scrutiny of Wyatt's probing gaze drilled against her. "Do you need a hand?"

"I've got it," she grunted in reply, swinging her leg up in a messy imitation of Jiya's much smoother approach. She saw the way it tortured him to not help, to clench his fists at his sides as she flopped up like a defeated fish, but she adamantly blocked him out from the beginning of her graceless ascent to the clumsy battle she waged upon her seat's restraints.

They were touching down in the present in no time, and for once it wasn't the outward turbulence that had Lucy gritting her teeth and fortifying her stomach. Every bit of seasickness she experienced on this journey was churning from within.

Emma was back, surely on the warpath of her life after what they'd done to her in Savannah. They hadn't caught a single glimpse of her as they circled the city, they were no closer to rescuing Rufus than they had been before landing in 1917, Lucy had averaged more mental breakdowns per hour than what could possibly be considered permissible under the circumstances, and Jiya unapologetically hated her for walking out on them so many months ago.

Lucy had no idea what would be waiting for her on the other side of the Mothership's hatch, but if the incoming reception was doomed to be anything like Jiya's, she might just opt to hide in the time machine all night instead of facing a full-on firing squad.

"Hey, you okay?"

She glanced up at the rumpled lines of Wyatt's face as he stood before her, lines that perfectly attuned themselves to the concerned pitch of his voice.

Jiya shuffled past them with a roll of her eyes, beelining it for the exit and dropping unceremoniously to the ground below. The squeak of rusty wheels rose to meet them, a familiar clank of metal coming to settle up against the exterior of the machine. "The stairs, Your Highness."

Even in the lightest of moods, royalty quips were off limits. They _had_ to be.

That was what it took to snap Lucy out of her funk, and once she was up, she was barreling past Wyatt, ready to push back even if it meant she'd end up flattened.

"Don't call me that," she retorted thinly, her heels banging obnoxiously over every last step until she was level with Jiya, eye-to-unblinking-eye. "Please. It - it's the last thing I ever want to hear, Jiya. I mean it."

She held her ground for a long moment, but the ire receded from her gaze a few seconds later, giving way to grudging understanding. "Yeah, I get it. That was a low blow. My bad."

"Thanks. I really appreciate it."

Jiya nodded, holding her eyes for another few moments - long enough to relent just a little further, to burn with just a speck of increased compassion - before she turned away, moving toward a dim hallway without any explanation or signal that Lucy should be following.

"Wait, aren't we going to...to debrief or - "

She tossed an impatient look over her shoulder, mouth hitched up derisively. "Sure, why not? Did you guys stop Rittenhouse or find Rufus?"

Lucy fidgeted with the chain of necklace, glancing around to find the entire room devoid of the activity - the people - she'd expected. "Uh, no - "

"Cool, me neither. Now I'm showering and grabbing some sleep while we have some guaranteed downtime. I'm sure Wyatt will happily give you the grand tour."

She watched Jiya go until there was nothing to watch anymore, then twisted back around to find Wyatt plunked down on the staircase with his chin in his hands. "I'm sorry, Lucy. I knew she was a little...miffed about your disappearing act, but - "

"Miffed?!"

"Okay, yeah, I guess that's underselling it."

"You could say that," she responded dryly. Her gaze scattered back over the room again, finding only a static bank of computers and very little else. "What the hell is going on here, Wyatt? This place isn't quite the rat hole that we're used to, but it's practically empty, and - and no one else is here."

"Agent Christopher is still out of the picture. She took an extended leave after everything was wrapped up the first time, and - "

"And what? She doesn't have a replacement?"

"Her replacement just stormed off for an appointment with some hot water and a memory foam pillow. You're not the only one who thought the last place was a rat hole."

" _Jiya_? Jiya isn't - "

"She is," he interrupted softly. "She never took Mason's offer. Rufus decided to help him rebuild the company, but Jiya declined in favor of staying on with Homeland. They'd been going after her hard once we disbanded, and she - well, I honestly think she found her niche on that assignment. She, um...she wanted to take us all out to dinner to make the announcement, but my 'Lucy is MIA' news sort of stole her thunder."

"Oh." She tried to hide the shame in her eyes, but she had a feeling the effort was wasted on him. "So...there's no team behind us? No additional support? Is this...is this whole thing even legit?"

"It's legit," he answered with a wily smirk. "But we're essentially a pesky side project, not exactly a high priority to anyone other than ourselves. And if the whole thing goes very, very south, Connor will be consulted...eventually. Homeland wasn't giving him clearance to touch any of it after his role in the original debacle that kicked off this whole mess, so without Christopher here to pull rank on that decision, we're more or less flying solo."

Flying solo. Fan-freaking-tastic. "And we're...where, exactly?"

"Can't tell you," he said meekly, his smirk dimming to reveal another flash of concern. "It's a safety measure. Believe me when I say you're better off this way."

Lucy frowned, sure that there was something more to that answer, something far more critical than his so-called safety measure. "I can't know where our home base is? I wasn't under the impression that I'd be held prisoner here."

"You're not, it's just...complicated. And technically speaking, this isn't really home base, but rather one of many home bases."

Her frown deepened, accompanied by an anxious spiral in her gut. "You do realize how unbelievably sketchy that sounds, right?"

Wyatt stood and ate up the last few steps in one long lunge, coming to a barely-contained stop right in front of her. "It's something Rufus and Jiya had been working on for quite a while - a series of safe houses, all of which are equipped with a launching station. They were determined to be ahead of the game this time, to secure as many off-the-radar spots as they could, just in case Emma or one of her proteges came a-knockin'. If one location falls into the wrong hands, there are others just like it, a small collection of them peppered randomly across the country...across the world, actually. The plan is to rotate between them, never staying in the same place for long enough to potentially get traced back to one."

Her head felt like it had come unglued from her shoulders. All this time she'd been wasting, burying herself in meaningless distractions, selfishly licking her wounds while the rest of the world went on spinning, and Rufus and Jiya - and likely Wyatt, who was probably downplaying his role in all of this - had been preparing themselves for yet another battle; an inevitable one, to anyone who wasn't determined to bury her head in the sand.

"I think that's more than enough catching up for one night," he murmured, a broad hand sliding over her upper arm. "You look beat, Luce. We can pick this back up in the morning."

Lucy sealed her lips together and nodded, suddenly feeling incredibly adrift in this strange, uninhabited place. Her approval was met with a gentle squeeze to her shoulder, then Wyatt was climbing back up to the Mothership and bounding down again with her bag in hand. He went ahead of her, the faint thud of his purposeful steps playing out a sentimental tempo that her heart remembered all too well.

She was not getting emotional over the way Wyatt Logan _walked_. She. Was. Not.

Oh God, she totally was.

Her boomeranging affection clashed against the mantra of her mind. She wasn't getting attached this time. She wasn't allowing him a foothold into her heart, not again. Not when it had all blown up so spectacularly before.

"Here you are," he announced as he poked his way through a partially opened doorway. "Simple, but not too shabby. We've seen worse, right?"

He was trying to produce some scrap of warmth inside of her, but for every passing second that she stood there - mentally sapped, spiritually bankrupt - the more incapable she was of reacting at all, warmth or no warmth.

Wyatt dropped her bag onto the bed and edged his way toward her, seemingly captive to her shifting mood. "I'm going out on a limb and speculating that the room isn't the problem…"

She shook her head, coughing up a weak laugh. "No, no. The room is fine. Really."

His expression tapered into a well-informed frown. He saw too much. He always, _always_ saw too much, and with that look on his face, there was no warding off the hug that followed.

They hadn't embraced in France. She hadn't even entertained the idea of a hug when he'd made his crash landing back into her life. If that didn't illustrate the incredible chasm that had sprung up between them after not touching for more than four hundred days, nothing would.

But now he was the one stepping forward, the one who was providing shelter from her internal disorder within his arms. He collected her unsettled bones and gave them shape again. He was somehow shining a light on an entire year's worth of darkness, the blinding purity of a moment that could either send her scurrying in the opposite direction or fill her to the brim with everything she'd so viciously cut herself off from when she'd severed the ribbons that bound her heart to his.

Her face fell against his chest, untethered. She wanted to drag him into that bed with her, to bask in the memory of how he'd shaken her whole world, turned her miserly understanding of love on its head, reordered the entire damn universe in one star-filled Arkansas night through nothing but the unassuming magic of his mouth on hers. How another twinkling night in Hollywood had further cemented her soul inside of his.

This was everything she wasn't supposed to be thinking about. Everything she'd adamantly decided she didn't want.

"Lucy…" His nose whispered against hers as he inched backwards, every brimming note of his voice sinking all the way to her bloodstream. "I'm still in love with you."

The spell shattered, giving way to a flash of white-hot anger. _Love_. How the hell could he possibly say that?

One jump. One goddamn jump, a freaking train wreck of one at that, and he was spouting off about love. As if all could so easily be forgiven between them. Like an entire year could evaporate just like that. Forget it all, forget the wife who had driven them apart, the unsearchable wounds that refused to heal deep down inside; forget the inescapable tragedy of _how_ they'd met, the circumstances that kept them from ever outrunning the fact that they'd been doomed from the start.

Loving Wyatt Logan had earned her nothing but a chronic, untreatable ache in her heart. Another round of that same misery and she might never claw her way out of it again.

The catch in her throat couldn't keep her from shoving him away with pathetic, stuttering dissent. "No. You don't. You can't."

"I do," he breathed reverently. "I never stopped."

" _No_."

He reached for her as she staggered backward, an upsweep of raw candor flowing straight out of him. "Lucy, it's true. I'm sorry if that scares you, but - "

"But nothing. I will get in that damn time machine, I'll dress up and play the part and haul my ass through every century of American history, okay? I'll even let a half dozen creeps stare me down like I'm a juicy rack of ribs, but I am doing _all of that_ for Rufus. Not for you, not for _us_ , not for anything or anyone but Rufus. So don't…" her voice shook along with her hands, tears trembling in her eyes. "Don't mistake whatever you think just happened for some kind of sign that I want anything else. I don't."

Piercing blue agony seared against her skin, begging her for any answer other than one she'd just given. "You're...you're lying. I know you are."

"What, you think you get to tell me what I do and do not want now? That I don't get to decide my own boundaries?"

"That's not - " his eyes shuttered closed as his throat bobbed frantically, "I didn't mean it like that."

She had him now and she knew it, but her usual reserve of mercy had mysteriously withered away, leaving a startling instinct to drill him down even further. "Really? Then how _did_ you mean it, Wyatt?"

"I...I don't know, I guess that I think you're lashing out because you're - you're afraid."

He was right. Of course he was right. She'd been less afraid in the midst of a shootout in Providence than she was right now as she forced herself to trample across Wyatt Logan's heart, but there was no stopping at this point. "If you want me to keep doing this, you - you better find a way to turn off the assumption that you know anything about me. And fast. Because I'm not the same person you remember, and I don't even want to be that person, not anymore. So let her go - let _me_ go - or I'm out."

His face reflected too much miserable rejection to endure. She turned away to throw all of her energy into dumping out her bag and rifling through her meager belongings, not pausing until she heard the door creak on its hinges.

"Bathroom's the last door on the right. Goodnight, Lucy."

With those words wrenched from his throat, he was gone. She waited for the click of the latch to unshackle her from her awful game, and when it reached her at last, she was finally free to collapse face first into the pillow and expel the lies, the unstemmable anguish, the regret of choosing poorly again and again. Each tear that tumbled against the pillowcase was branded with his name.


	6. Pancakes

_a/n: I solemnly swear that the ending of the last chapter was not intended to break anyone...at least not indefinitely._

* * *

Waking up under the same roof as Lucy Preston was supposed to feel vastly better than waking up thousands of miles apart from her. Maybe someday his timing wouldn't be absolute shit and he'd use the word _love_ when there was actually some hope of hearing it returned to him. Even better, maybe one day he'd wake up and not care where she was or how she felt about him. Maybe he'd rid himself of this revolving instinct for self-destruction. Maybe he'd close up shop for good, make a permanent move back to middle-of-nowhere Texas, take a page out of a smarter man's book and just swear off the whole idea of companionship forever and ever. The end.

And maybe pigs would fly and the moon was made of cheese and California really was on its way to breaking off into the Pacific Ocean. That would be the day he'd stop feeling like his lungs were giving out every time he got caught up in those big brown eyes.

Wyatt pushed himself up and out of bed before daybreak, claiming the bathroom long before there was any possibility of having company. He showered, shaved, scrubbed at his teeth, pulled a mystifying amount of hair out of the sink - God, they'd shed _that much_ between the two of them in just one night? - and then set off for the kitchen.

Lucy could spin as many bullshit stories about not wanting him as she wanted. He could live with that particular lie for now. What he absolutely could not allow was the counterfeit assumption that he didn't know her.

First up, breakfast. The best damn breakfast he could make. The one that always had her smacking her lips together like a happy child. It was day one of his rebellion: Pancake day.

She came padding down the hall right as he was turning his first batch, squinting and slow-limbed, tousled dark hair tumbling loosely over her shoulders. Jiya was only a few steps behind her, and apparently a night's sleep had done them all some good; they moved in silent synchronization, Jiya rooting out a kettle from a nearby cabinet to hand over to Lucy, which had Lucy sliding past Wyatt to turn on the tap.

 _Just like old times_ , he thought with a grin. Reminiscing over those filmy bunker mornings would probably earn him another 'you're sick' comment, but God was it ever true. He'd really missed the easy pattern of having his team come together for every meal.

"Perfect timing, ladies," he greeted warmly. "Breakfast will be served in t-minus 90 seconds."

"Would you look at that...soldier boy lost the beard? I thought your damned razor had fallen off the face of the earth."

Lucy's head jerked upward, instantly scanning his smooth face in response to Jiya's smartass teasing.

Wyatt flicked the skillet up again, flipping a pancake mid-wink. "Do I pass inspection, ma'am?"

It wasn't Lucy who took that bait. "If the goal was to convince us that you're twelve, I'd say this was a job well done."

He ignored Jiya, keeping his eyes laser-focused on Lucy's blank expression. She snapped back to life as the kettle began to overflow with water, reaching to shut it off with an awkward, jolting momentum.

"It's fine."

Fine, huh? The flush in her cheeks said a whole lot more than _fine_.

He let it go at that, not willing to push his luck after last night's gruesome downpour. She'd shown her hand too many times yesterday for Wyatt to give up on what he knew was still there, but storming the gates with a direct admission of love had obviously been too much too soon. He could play the long game if that was what she needed. Hell, he should have known that without diving in ass-backwards, but now that he had that dickish performance out of the way, there was nowhere to go but -

Nope. He wasn't jinxing himself like that. Better to just serve up her favorite pancakes and rely on some vague wish that things would improve from this point forward.

It required only one forkful to produce the exact sound he'd pinned all of his confidence on - Lucy was humming her delight, an involuntary brightening of her whole face as she chewed and swallowed and snagged an experimental sip of still-steaming tea.

Wyatt was busy filling up the skillet with more batter, but no task could distract him from his preferred role as spectator of all things Lucy Preston. "As good as you remembered?"

She kept her eyes down, her fingers reflexively tightening around her teacup, undoubtedly aware that his question carried an absurd amount of significance, little of it having anything to do with the food on her plate. "Pretty good."

 _It's fine_. _Pretty good_. He'd be lucky to get three consecutive words out of her before this day was over.

But once she mistakenly assumed that his attention was appropriately diverted, she surrendered to the same satisfied daze, eyes closing and lips turning up at another taste of her breakfast. He observed it all with one eye straying back to the table every few seconds, suckered further in with every wayward glance. She was damn near euphoric over something as simple as a freaking pancake. Not the same person? Not the same person, his ass. Only the Lucy he knew could have a religious experience over breakfast food.

The secret to his success? Cinnamon, just a light sprinkle of it, the same shade as her eyes when she stood in gilded sunlight.

Jiya cleared her throat, a pesky signal to let him on the fact that she was conscious of his dimwitted ploy. Or conscious of his constant staring in their direction. Or maybe to indicate that he was burning the pancake that had been marooned on the range for far too long, a pitiful victim of his ongoing distraction

Knowing Jiya, it was probably all of the above.

"Who wants seconds?" he asked sheepishly.

"If you're offering that blackened thing that's been charred beyond recognition, count me out."

Okay, so she was definitely attuned to at least one of those three prospects.

"I have others," he answered with a hint of defensiveness creeping into his voice. He motioned with his head, showcasing a heaping plate of near-perfect examples on the counter beside him. "Lucy? More for you?"

"No thanks."

Another two-worded masking of the truth. He'd never known her to stop so abruptly before, but apparently she was limiting herself to only a certain level of enjoyment where he was concerned. She was up to rinse her dishes in another moment, making her stilted retreat as soon as she could break away from the sink. "I'll, uh...get the dishes later. Since you cooked."

"You don't have to - "

"I'll do it," she insisted a decibel or two higher, drowning out his opposition.

"But - "

"We do have a dishwasher this time," Jiya stated dryly, one brow rising at the spectacle unfolding before her. "I think even Lucy can handle that. It's not like she volunteered for a decade of hard labor."

Lucy cracked an unconvincing smile, doing her best to laugh along at her own expense. "Yep. I can confirm - unlike certain other kitchen appliances, dishwashers do not pose a challenge."

"There we have it," Jiya droned with the mock enthusiasm of a game show host. "She's on dish duty. All is well. The world will continue to spin on its axis."

Lucy's smile faltered, but she kept her chin up as she left the room, escaping down the hall with nothing other than the quiet shuffling sound that trailed behind her. Wyatt was so busy staring after the not-there hologram of her printed flannel pajamas that he totally missed the impending attack brewing right in front of him.

"Pick your chin up off the floor, Wyatt. It's embarrassing."

"No, _you're_ embarrassing," he shot back at Jiya with a glare, surprising himself with how quickly his temper had risen to the challenge. "Don't you think you've been a little harsh with her? I get that it sucked, okay? She left without saying goodbye and it sucked. But it's barely been a day and the raging bitch routine is already wearing thin."

She snorted, dark amusement seeping into her smile. "You think I'm being bitchy because she didn't tell me goodbye?"

"You're telling me it's something else that's crawled up your ass?"

"Yeah, the same thing that should have crawled up yours."

He gave a sharp twist of a knob on the stove before parading over to the table with a full stack of pancakes, eyeing her cagily as he slumped into the seat that Lucy had vacated. "Meaning?"

"Meaning she ripped you apart when she left, Wyatt. I'm not the reason she took off, so even if it hurt, I knew it wasn't personal. And yeah, I _was_ upset when she disappeared, but you…? Upset doesn't even begin to cover what it did to you."

"You're..." he drove a weary hand through his hair, confused despite the simplicity of what she'd just said. "You're seriously trying to punish her for _my_ sake? At what point did you decide it was up to you to fight my battles?"

"Right around the same time you made it clear that you wouldn't," she answered with a scoff, stabbing another pancake off the top of the stack. "I was already a little skeptical of how she was going to fit into any of this when she'd made it pretty damn clear a year ago that she was out. Then to see you so desperate to bridge the gap, obsessing over her every word and facial expression...I'm sorry, Wyatt, but it's torture to watch you act like that."

He forced down a bite of food, annoyed to find his throat alarming dry. "I'm not obsessing."

"You are. Let's not forget the moony looks and handsy bullshit I walked in on when I got back to the Mothership last night."

"Are you sure you're the same Jiya Marri who's about as goofy-in-love as anyone I've ever known? Because not only do you sound like you want to take one giant crap on the entire idea of romance, but you also sound _nothing_ like Rufus when it comes to this stuff. I need my wingman back ASAP, the one who would be helping me in his own wacky dumbass way...or at least he'd be trying, which is more than I can say for you."

"I am trying," she said with a softened look of apology. "Maybe not in the way you want to hear it, but I _am_ helping, Wyatt. Someone's got to keep your head out of the clouds before you float away completely."

He smiled patiently, a hand tapping against her wrist. "Thanks, but I can handle it."

"Famous last words." Her returning smile was only halfway believable, reticent to say the least. "Just...try to be careful, okay? I'm sure she had her reasons, but she hurt you. Big time. And no amount of secret recipe pancakes is going to fix whatever it is that sent her running in the first place."

He reached for his mug of coffee, mustering as much levity as he could scrape together. "What are you talking about? These pancakes were supposed to impress you, not her."

"Right," she scoffed good-naturedly. "That's a great story. Very convincing."

"Don't deny that you like them. I saw you going in for another helping."

She bypassed his stupid joke, a tiny bit of mischief emerging in her dark eyes. "I find it hard to believe that Rufus - the guy who could make a turtle look aggressively fast - was really all that helpful to you the first time around, but if I'm supposed to be his stand-in, I can tell you one thing right off the bat."

Wyatt perked up, all ears to whatever assistance she could provide. "I'm listening."

"It bugs the hell out of her to feel like the odd man out. She's used to being the one who knows what's going on, and maybe even more importantly, she likes to be the one who gives you a hard time."

"Are you saying she's…" he could barely squeeze the word out for how laughable it was to him. "Jealous?"

"Sure am. I would know, okay?" Jiya leaned back in her chair, nodding with authority. "The three of you may have gone through hell on most of those early jumps, but the bond you guys formed was worthy of a little envy. I felt that then, way back at the beginning...wishing to have a piece of the magic you three shared, to share in that crazy adventure you were all on. Mostly, to feel like I was a real part of the team and not the one who just sits at home and waits."

"We haven't jumped without her though, other than - "

"I know, but that's not really the point. What I'm saying is that it bothers her to feel like she's on the outside of everything now. _Especially_ when that means someone else is closer to you than she is."

It made sense on some level, even if it sounded absolutely ridiculous. "So am I supposed to use that information to make her - "

Jiya's laughter drummed right over his question. "Nope, I'm out. I am not scheming with you, Wyatt. I want no part in whatever mess you're bound to make of this."

"That's it? You tell me she's probably jealous, but you draw the line _there_? Have some pity on me. I'm terrible at this stuff."

"Fine, you want advice? Here's my best offer - play it cool and take your time. You both have enough baggage to fill the entire cargo hold of a big ass battle cruiser, which is probably the reason she bolted on you way back when. Don't rush her now that you finally have another chance."

Little did she know, he'd already massively blown the lid on playing it cool. _Great_.

Jiya gave him an obliging pat on the back as she stood, clearing both of their dishes to the sink once she was up. "And whatever you do, Wyatt, please don't go off the deep end before we have Rufus back. I'd really prefer for you to not lose your head over her either way, but you do it before my boyfriend is back and I will absolutely not be this awesome about it. Okay?"

He couldn't help but roll his eyes at that stipulation, but there was no mistaking the seriousness in her voice. "Okay."

She left him there, alone with the opposing forces of _take your time_ and _win her back_ circulating in his head, and there was no denying that he was stuck in an unremitting tailspin. There was a very loud voice inside of him that wouldn't rest until he was beating down the door to Lucy's bedroom and demanding that they go another round on last night's abysmal excuse for a conversation, the one that had been filled with more self-deception than he'd ever known her to possess. That was usually his specialty, not hers.

A different voice was telling him that Jiya was - and always had been - infinitely smarter than him, which meant he'd be a fool to ignore her warning. Not only that, but she was capable of exercising something that had never quite suited him - caution. Rushing in with another declaration of his feelings had to be off the table. It had turned Lucy against him in a heartbeat, and he couldn't afford to scare her off like that again, not when the stakes were as high as dually losing her all over again while also compromising their best shot at saving Rufus.

So he purposefully granted her the space she so furiously craved, lying low until the blast of an alarm pulled them all from their beds the following night.

Wyatt forced himself to maintain a healthy distance as he followed a few steps behind her through the dusty Black Hills of South Dakota. He kept out of Lucy's way when they landed at a different safe house eight hours later, then held up her bustle in Atlanta the next day - and yet also nearly a hundred and fifty years earlier - as she fumbled in and out of a precariously narrow stagecoach. Another restless night passed before their next jump had him listening with keenly fixed concentration as Lucy successfully talked her way through closed doors and crowded taverns and political forums.

His rewards were few and far between, but it didn't take much to keep him going. He strung his hopes on every little moment he got - moments where enthusiasm broke cleanly through her shell of apathy, moments where she turned to him with a warble of excitement as she triumphed over the puzzle of Rittenhouse's objective from one era to the next. The night she gripped his arm as they beat Emma to the constable in Rapid City, cutting her off at the knees and sending her running for her life; the thrill in Lucy's eyes as she explained the difference between live and silent filibusters on the crest of Capitol Hill. They all collected somewhere inside of Wyatt's chest, building his confidence brick by brick, steadily reaffirming that she wasn't nearly as unreachable as she wanted to be.

And there were other moments, too. Moments that sent Lucy skittering off balance as a Rittenhouse thug shoved her straight into Wyatt, leaving her no choice but to clutch his shoulders until she could regain her breath. That early morning in D.C. when Emma spotted them from a high window, nothing but a glint of red hair and the far more sinister silver barrel of a pistol aimed right for them...a pistol that allowed Wyatt to cover Lucy's body with his for several miraculous seconds, a pulse-hastening phenomenon that followed him right into his dreams as he tossed and turned all night under the roof of safe house number three.

But for every instance where he thought they'd reached a breakthrough, a reciprocal setback quickly boomeranged him back into reality. Whatever old piece of her had resurfaced while they worked together in the past, there was never anything to cling to once they returned to the present. She formed any imaginable excuse to make herself scarce. It usually came right on the heels of a snide remark, a complaint about landing in another secret location that charmed her even less than last. Or worse yet were the defeatist comments about coming no closer to getting Rufus and getting on with her life. It was those mentions of her eventual desertion that stung him the most, the implication that she'd do it the same way all over again - she'd leave, slip away in the night, pick up and make a new start in any place that didn't include him. That was what had him missing Lucy like a phantom limb even as she stood right beside him.

He kept telling himself that it couldn't be true. It was another layer of the facade, and if he watched for long enough, Wyatt could always find the gap in her story, the fragility she wore at the corners of her mouth when she told another crippling lie. It was enough to fuel his resolve, right up until the moment he gave Lucy just enough breathing room to lose her in the middle of the ugliest ambush their team had ever seen.

* * *

 _a/n: How many (minor...they're totally minor) cliffhangers is a fanfic author allotted before pitchforks are involved? Asking for a friend._


	7. The Protocol

_a/n: Would have had this one up sooner if FFnet hadn't been a glitchy mess last night, but here it is - chapter 7! Certain parts of this chapter have existed for a longgg time, so I'm excited to finally set them free. Thank you for your continued support in reviewing/favoriting/following :)_

* * *

" _Phoenix_? Phoenix in 1980?"

Jiya hit a button on the control panel with enough force to possibly inflict real damage to the board. "It doesn't matter how many times you ask, Lucy. The year isn't changing and neither is the location."

"But...there's nothing." She froze with the two halves of her seat buckle less than an inch away from successfully meeting. "Even when I searched it, there's still no obvious - "

"Yep. Nothing significant. Got it. But the readout says Phoenix, so we're going to Phoenix."

"Oh, really? Thanks for the heads up, Jiya. I thought we were checking out Timbuktu instead."

Wyatt sighed. Loudly. No amount of game theory or tactical training exercise could have prepared a guy for dealing with this incessant bickering. "The two of you are enough to drive a sane man out of a moving C-130 transport, no parachute needed."

He held his breath as both women eyed each other for a prolonged beat, wordlessly searching for something he couldn't quite put his finger on.

It was Lucy who turned to him with a disarming smile right as she snapped her harness into place. That smile would have sent off all sorts of warning bells in his head if he had any chance of keeping his wits about him. Which he didn't. Not when she favored him with a look like that one. "Sane, Wyatt? That's how you see yourself?"

"She's got a point," Jiya agreed, nodding with unnecessary vigor from her spot in the pilot's chair. "Sane might be the last word I'd choose to describe you."

"And no one's stopping you from jumping out of a C-1...something or other. If that's what would make you happy…"

"Then we're not here to stand in the way of your happiness."

"Exactly," Lucy finished with a jostling bounce of her hair. "If you think hurtling through the air without a parachute from a good 12,000 feet up would be preferable to our company, that's really your call."

Jiya flipped the switch to the hatch, sealing them off from the present as she prepared for launch. "What she said. Live your best life, Logan."

"I liked it better when you were at each other's throats," he grumbled while sliding his own restraints into place with a definitive click.

Truth be told, it was only a million times better to hear Lucy and Jiya uniting to poke fun at him than it was to endure the friction-filled sniping that came before. They were supposed to be friends, or at least they had been before Lucy had Houdini'd herself out of their lives. If it required the mutual placement of a bullseye on his back to remind them of that, Wyatt was more than happy to oblige.

"So do we even need to do the whole five-finger discount routine this time?" he asked when the time machine came to a gentle stop several seconds later. "Pretty sure blue jeans were passable in 1980."

"I'd be better off if this sweater came with shoulder pads," Lucy answered with a small grin. "But yeah, we should be safe so long as we're not here to crash a fancy Rittenhouse soiree or something."

"That might not be so bad," he muttered under his breath, the thought ringing through so automatically that there was no chance of filtering it.

"What?"

The surprised spike in Lucy's voice reminded him that he wasn't supposed to be pressing his luck, not when he was obviously within range of being overheard.

"Nothing," Wyatt said quickly, sensing that he now had the attention of both teammates, neither of which seemed inclined to let him off the hook. "Just joking."

"Joking that you want to go to a fancy party?" Jiya questioned with a shrewd tilt of her forehead.

"Yep. Haha," he deadpanned, eyebrows raised high. "Now let's get a move on."

He was first out of the Mothership, dismounting with an appalling shortage of his usual finesse, all because the idea of attending an uppity elitist party with a properly decked-out Lucy as his date was too enthralling to be ignored. That exact scenario had done him one hell of a favor before, hadn't it?

He heard the whispers from behind him, the pithy remark of "a fancy party _with you_ ," being mumbled from Jiya to Lucy, but he refused to offer any semblance of a defense. She was right, after all. Why deny the truth? What would that really gain him?

But even if he wasn't refuting it, he still chose to strike out ahead of them, hoping to avoid the fallout of whatever else Jiya planned to unload now that she was given the opening. He wasn't moderating a discussion of his feelings for the two of them to pick apart like conniving vultures. He had to have some goddamn scrap of dignity left, or else he really might have to consider leaping out of the first available aircraft he could find.

The dust-draped warehouse that Jiya had parked them in stood empty, not much in the way of proverbial nooks or crannies to offer cover for someone who meant them harm, but even so, every tiny hair on the back of Wyatt's neck had found a reason to stand on end. "Is this place giving anyone else the creeps?"

"Not me," Jiya answered cheerfully. "I'm just ready to get out there. You know how I feel about the '80s."

For every second that passed without an answer from his other teammate, the higher his paranoia flew. "Lucy?"

"I don't know," she said eventually, her voice seeming too far-off. "Maybe a little."

Wyatt glanced over his shoulder, less than ecstatic at the prospect of seeing her positioned at the opposite end of such a large room, her head inclined toward the wide-framed doors that presumably led out into the street.

"Hear something interesting out there?"

She shrugged, tugging one door open without turning to face him. "Not really. But we're certainly not getting anywhere by just standing around in here, right?"

He was on his way over to her, eager to put to rest whatever it was that was niggling at his overstrung senses, when the first clap of gunshots came screaming past his ears. Wyatt dove toward the Mothership, kneeling in its shadow for the split-second it took to get his bearings.

Jiya came sliding across the floor just as he was rocking back up to his feet. "What the - "

Her ending choice of expletive was cut off by another surge of bullets from above them. Wyatt scanned the perimeter, pissed as all hell to find that there was a narrow gangway running across the north side of the building, a fatally important detail that he'd moronically overlooked.

"We need to go, Wyatt! Now!"

He shut her out entirely, gun drawn, nerves wedged stiffly against his throat. There were at least two men on the upper level, another emerging from the shadows of a darkened corner on the ground floor. A few returning shots at the bridge above did nothing to alleviate Wyatt's rampant deluge of adrenaline. No miracle of a shot could solve this, not until…

Not until he knew Lucy was okay. She'd been halfway out of the warehouse before the attack had begun. Surely she'd made it to safety without any trouble. She...she had to, or -

"Wyatt?!" Jiya shouted with a tug to his sleeve. "The protocol, okay?"

 _Protocol_. Thank God for layers and layers of established protocol. One look at Jiya's wide eyes - scared, but never defeated - and Wyatt knew she'd find them one way or another. Just like she knew there was zero frickin' chance of him stepping foot in that time machine without Lucy plunked down in the seat across from him.

"Got it," he called over the tumult. "I'll cover you - go, go!"

He squeezed out several shots as she flung herself up and over the lip of the machine, firing through half a clip before he felt the familiar crackling tension of takeoff splintering the air behind him. She was gone. No Jiya, no time machine.

With a fleeting glimpse backwards, he could also confirm that there was no Lucy.

It took another deafening face-off before the last of his targets finally dropped. Wyatt paused for just long enough to sink an extra bullet between each set of sunken, unfocused eyes that he passed as he tore through the warehouse and skidded out into the alley.

He almost missed it. In another second, he would have taken off toward the bustling crosswalk and searched for her through the faceless masses of downtown Phoenix. But something - possibly an act of God himself - allowed Wyatt's scan of the alley to snag on the discrepancy of a double door side entrance to the adjacent building. A side entrance that hadn't been closed properly. The doors were askew, a glint of the metal lock sticking out where it shouldn't be...the wrong one had been pulled shut first, leaving both ajar.

He slipped through with a stabilizing breath, eyes making a rapid sweep through the cavernous room, some kind of old-fashioned theater that had atrophied with years of moth-eaten neglect.

His whole heart lurched dizzily as his probing gaze came to an abrupt halt.

There was a body crumpled across a dirty stage floor, too pale and alarmingly lifeless, sending a hot whistle of panic through every muscle he had.

"Lucy?" he called out ahead of his too-slow feet. "Lucy!"

His head pounded with silent pleas as he ran down the nearest aisle, waiting in vain for a returned greeting.

 _Get up. Get up, Lucy_. _Get the hell up_.

S _ay something_. _Anything_.

 _Please just flinch_ , _dammit_.

She ignored every single one of those directives, choosing to remain motionless...defiant. It was better to think of it that way, to assume this was another willful flash of her stubborn personality clashing against the idea of someone else giving the orders. Rather that than…

Wyatt vaulted himself from the floor to the stage with one hand on the edge of the platform, and then she was right there, looking like little more than a flattened cardboard replica of the woman he loved.

"Lucy," he urged in a throaty, flaring voice, knees hitting hard against the floorboards as he hovered over her. He swept a hand beneath her head and turned her gently in his arms. Her skin was warm to the touch. A breath climbed through her chest. He found the steady thrum of a pulse buzzing beneath his fingertips as soon as he could get a hand to her neck.

Relief broke over him like every brick of the Hoover Dam coming undone all at once, releasing a flood of nothing but her name. " _Lucy_."

He cradled her skull in one hand and pulled her shoulders into his lap, hunching over her as he shivered through an aftershock of panic. The murmur of words not quite formed parted her lips, but her eyelids didn't budge. There was already a crawling outline of an ugly bruise taking shape on her forehead. A quick check of her neck, limbs, back - trembling fingers sketching along her spine - and he was sure there was nothing else that required his immediate attention. No blood spilled, no bones out of place. Only that damn goose egg rising up over her brow, the type of injury that could be as minor as a headache, easily solved with a handful of Advil and good night's rest…

Or as disastrous as a life-ending brain hemorrhage.

"Luce, can you hear me?" He reached for her hand and squeezed her fingers between his. "C'mon, sweetheart - "

Her hand flexed weakly around his. "Wy...Wyatt?"

"It's me," he breathed back in an instant. "You're safe, okay?"

Boundaries be damned, his lips landed on her temple and rested there for several seconds.

Several seconds too long.

A gunshot cracked the wood floor mere inches from his knee, a second bullet splitting the air as he rolled Lucy offstage and into the wings, dust raining down from the thick red curtains that surrounded them.

"I don't think I've properly thanked you for bringing the princess out of retirement," Emma drawled out in symphony with the ominous click of heels that announced every step she took toward the stage. "Sure makes my life a hell of a lot easier if I can just dispose of both of you at the same time."

Years of ruthless, stony-faced training slammed head first into the gaping hole that Lucy Preston had lasered into his heart. There was a day when this would have been a no-brainer. A day when Wyatt would have stashed the barely conscious civilian against a wall and taken his chances with the lunatic assassin who was determined to end them both.

But if he died, so did she. If he failed, they were both screwed. And if they didn't get out of this theater before too long, Jiya would be coming back for corpses.

She'd also be coming back without a stitch of defense. No backup, no operative on the ground, nothing, so there was a very real possibility that Emma would be waiting here to take her out too, leaving no stone unturned.

To hell with training. He wasn't a damn soldier anymore. He was a free agent, a gun for hire, and there was always going to be one mission that superseded all else; he would do anything to keep this team safe. They were all he had left in the world, so much better than what he deserved. He wasn't parting with a single one of them.

With as much tenderness as he could afford to spare, he swung Lucy's body up against his shoulder and braced her to him with one arm. His other hand twitched once - all he ever allowed himself - around his gun, then took careful aim. Each backward step brought them closer to the red-lined exit sign. Closer to escape, to retreat. To safety.

It was almost laughable, the extent of Emma's narcissism. Very little had changed in her year's vacation to 1779. The woman was still so damn vain that it never occurred to her that those pole-worthy boots of hers were exactly what he needed to track her movements, to stay one silent step ahead of her nauseating peacock show.

Not that it didn't occasionally work to her advantage. It hurt like hell when one of those heels connected with his face - been there, done that, did not purchase a souvenir.

The noise of her advance gradually fading out was his signal. She was getting in position, staking her claim from an unknown vantage point. Luckily for him, that vantage point was absolutely irrelevant to his plan.

The first flicker of coppery hair was all he needed. The rest of her head wasn't even in view when he unloaded a round of shots overhead, unleashing a flourishing downpour of crimson velvet curtains. Emma's venomous curse - and one incredibly off-target shot - bounced right off of Wyatt's ears as he ducked through the door and found himself in another alleyway.

 _Exit, stage left_.

His footfalls struck fire against the pavement, blazing a one way ticket to anywhere that wouldn't involve the most important person in his universe getting shot up like Swiss cheese. He felt the subdued roll of a groan against him, but Lucy's arms continued to sway idly across his back, not a word returned to him as he called her name through a heaving exhale.

They needed a strategy, one that would guarantee getting away from Emma, finding a doctor for Lucy, and safely existing under the radar in 1980 until Jiya found them again. Too bad that the best half of Wyatt's brain was knocked out cold across his shoulder, unable to contribute a word of guidance as to how he should tackle this hornets' nest of a dilemma.

Whatever he decided to do, he was doing it alone.

* * *

"Lucy?"

The turbulent fear threading through those two syllables was as effective in bringing her around as the hand that brushed her shoulder.

"Lucy, hey, we're going to get your head looked at, okay? Just hold still, I'll come around to get you."

"Wait..." Her tongue was a little thick as she tried to pry a few more words loose, eyelids even less cooperative. She struck out a little blindly and found a twitch of hardened muscle. "I - I'm okay, Wyatt."

"How about we let the experts weigh in on that."

Lucy pressed her lips together and forced herself to sit up straighter, only then realizing that her her head had been crowded into the crook of his neck. She blinked, closed her eyes with a reticent hiss, then detangled herself from him completely. "It's only a headache. We don't need - " upon second review, the illuminated glow of the emergency room before her was just as real as she'd imagined - "a damn hospital for that."

"You just hate doctors."

"So do you."

His grunt of acknowledgement brought a tentative curve to her lips, one that blossomed into a quiet chuckle.

Wyatt wasn't quite as amused. "Doesn't matter, Lucy. A head injury isn't something to screw around with."

"And what's keeping Rittenhouse from tearing this place apart looking for us?" She squinted at her surroundings, piecing together the small cab of a classic-looking truck that just about screamed the name _Wyatt Logan_. "Looks like you managed to get us away from Emma, so why stop now? That's asking for - "

"We're already an hour outside of the city and there's no tail on us. You've been in and out of it for the better part of that hour - far more _out_ than in, mind you - and I'm not going a mile farther until someone examines your damn head."

"In the '80s, though? Really? They - "

"We were born in the '80s," he countered with a snort. "Last I checked, we don't have to worry about them leeching you to death in this decade."

She twisted closer, her jaw jutting out ahead of her in the way her mother had always referred to as _less than flattering_. "It's still nearly forty years behind our current technology, our research, our - well, our everything."

"So what's the worst that happens? The MRI machine is outdated? So what?"

"If they even have an MRI machine, which they very well may not," she snipped back at him.

The obstinate set of his shoulders dwindled, concern spilling over the roadblock of his annoyance. "At the very least, they can prescribe something for the pain. Might not be as good as what you'd get at home, but until Jiya is back, it's our best - "

"Back? Back from where?"

A flare of guilt ricocheted over his face. "The present. Or a whole bunch of other pasts. Whatever it takes to be sure that Emma won't trap her somewhere else and that she'll have enough charge to pull off a successful extraction mission."

Comprehension was dawning slowly, doing her no favors in the argument for not walking into the stupid hospital that awaited them across the parking lot. "She - she left us here?"

"It's a contingency plan. If the time machine is under fire and we can't all make it there safely, she'll come back for us."

"Oh, right. A contingency plan. Just how many of these vaguely outlined contingencies are there? And when exactly do I earn the right to a team handbook or something?" Lucy tilted a skeptical eyebrow at him, doing her best to conceal the spiral of anxiety that came with his explanation. No Jiya, no Mothership, no buffer. Just Wyatt and this truck and nothing else for the foreseeable future...or the foreseeable past, if she was being technical. Her head hammered a few decibels louder as she tried to forge through the complexities of that puzzle.

"Believe it or not, there is a method to all the madness. It's safer to keep some of this on a need-to-know basis."

Lucy studied him through eyes that just wouldn't quit squinting no matter how she attempted to leverage them the rest of the way open. It wasn't the first time he'd alluded to some unknown precaution of his, something that seemed to be intrinsically tied up in her well-being, but the low grumble of his voice was unmistakable. He wasn't sharing anything beyond that.

Two could play at the stubborn asshole game, and she'd never had any problem with taking all her best cues from him. "Fine, keep your secrets. But I'm not sitting in a germ-infested waiting room for half the night just to be told that I need to ice my forehead and wake up every two or three hours to make sure I'm not dying."

Exasperation battled against the turmoil in Wyatt's expression, neither of them fully winning out. "So that's it? You're so pissed that Jiya and I haven't told you every last detail of the overall mission blueprint that you're just going to hold it over my head? Even if it means that you're the one who suffers?"

"You look like you're suffering plenty for the both of us."

Now he was back to looking guilty, so much so that the profound depths of his ocean-blue gaze were actually managing to shame her too. "Lucy…"

"Forget it, okay? It's not even about all of that. I really don't need a special prescription. Just something over the counter will do the trick, and… " she touched her forehead tentatively, wincing as her fingers skated over the growing knot that ballooned just below her hairline, "and maybe a bag of frozen peas while we're at it."

Wyatt sucked in a long breath, frustration oozing off of him. He clicked on the dome light with a sigh before turning to face her. "Here. Let me…"

He slid closer and tipped her head up with gentle fingertips wedged beneath her chin. She was transported in an instant. His hand there at her jaw, face swimming so near to hers, low amber lights washing over him...

But this wasn't Hollywood and he wasn't kissing her.

"Look up," he said quietly, warm breath scattering over her skin.

Lucy bit her lip and complied.

"Now look back at me," he instructed, his voice thick and rasping. Their eyes connected, a prickle of energy rising up her spine as she encountered the gravitational force of his unblinking gaze. "And...back at the light."

His fingers slid down to press against the pulse point at her neck. If she bit her lip any harder, it might just bleed.

"What year are we in right now?"

"1980," she returned flimsily, eyes flickering back to his.

"Which location did we leave from in the present?"

"Is this really necessary?"

His gaze narrowed. "Would you prefer to answer an E.R. nurse instead? Because that can easily be arranged."

Lucy returned his look with a scorching glare of her own. "We left from an undisclosed spot somewhere in the Northeast. My _team_ doesn't tell me any more than that."

Her point of emphasis provoked a twitch of a grin. "And what city did we jump to?"

"Phoenix, Arizona. It's the state capital, was founded in the early 1880s, and is part of what's known as the Valley of the Sun."

"Very impressive, you little show-off," he answered in a tone so smooth, she couldn't help but relent a little, easing further against the pressure of his hand at her pulse. "How old were you on your last birthday?"

"Now, Master Sergeant," she admonished somewhat thinly, "that's not a polite question to ask a lady."

That twitch of a grin ascended into the real thing. "Pardon me, ma'am. Wasn't thinking clearly."

It was all she could do to swallow back the unthinkable impulse to make what little space remained between them disappear. Apparently she wasn't thinking so clearly either.

Wyatt's expression wavered. He must have seen the spark of intent in her eyes, prompting him to close his own and drop his hand from her neck. "We have a few hours drive ahead of us. I guess we can pick something up at a drugstore on the way if you're really so set on skipping the hospital visit, and then you should try to sleep for a little while."

"Where are we going?" she asked around the boulder in her throat.

He sat up straighter, snapping off the light above them and shifting the truck back into drive with more gusto than necessary. "Another undisclosed location. One you haven't been to yet."

"Naturally. Don't know why I even bother asking."

"Just trying to keep the mystery alive, babydoll."

She had to lock her teeth together to keep herself from flinging a sarcastic 'sweetheart' back at him. Even if said flippantly, uttering that word would have somehow qualified as her biggest self-betrayal yet, a forbidden line she refused to even think about approaching.

"You can relax, Lucy," he said flatly. "It didn't mean anything."

What didn't mean anything? The silly nickname he'd just used, a heart-twisting homage to a kiss that sure as hell had meant _something_ , even before either of them were ready to admit it? Because she was pretty damn sure he couldn't call her that and have it mean nothing. Maybe it was the way tender way he'd touched her neck, checked her pulse, examined her eyes…? Maybe _that_ didn't mean anything. Or was he referring to how he'd saddled her to his side and held her against him as he drove for an hour, never once breaking his connection to her as she'd made her slow rebound back to consciousness?

Lucy wished any number of those things could qualify as meaningless, but they didn't. Not for either of them. She knew better than to believe otherwise.

The sooner she could get some medicine in her system and close her eyes against this entire nightmare, the better chance she had at stifling the renegade urge she'd just experienced in that damn parking lot. She could be concussed six ways to Sunday and that still wouldn't excuse a mistake as big as the one she'd almost committed.


	8. Tumbleweeds

_a/n: So sorry that I haven't been on here much lately to reply to reviews! I've been busy every night this week & feel like a walking disaster at this point, but...in a good way? It's been the fun sort of busy, so that's the silver lining. That said, HUGE thanks to those of you who have been loyally dropping a line (or shouting in all caps, LOL) on each chapter! I appreciate it so much :)_

* * *

Lucy woke slowly to a slippery smudge of drool pooling at the corner of her mouth. _Eww_.

She mopped it up with a slight shift of her sleeve, gradually reacquainting herself with her displaced surroundings. Last she remembered, she'd been nodding off against Wyatt's shoulder. An ill-informed choice, no doubt about it, but he'd been pretty insistent and she couldn't argue with his logic. She'd been listing closer and closer to the passenger window after swallowing a few painkillers, eyelids drooping and control slipping steadily away from her. One little bump in the road would have sent her forehead cracking right into the pane of glass, which really seemed like the lesser of those two evils. She'd already woken up against him once before taking the pills and that hadn't sent her down a black hole of shame or self-hatred, right? And continuing to argue with him would have expended far more effort than she had to give at that point. Sleep won out, and so did Wyatt.

None of that accounted for where she found herself now. She was stretched horizontally across the bench seat, her head pillowed on his jacket and her feet kicked up into his lap. Wyatt was oblivious to her, caught up in the tune of a classic rock song - although not a classic _yet_ , at least not to the decade they were currently trapped in. He was mouthing the lyrics, tapping a hand against the wheel in time to the beat as he drove, and… and his other hand was wrapped securely around her ankle. His thumb stroked methodically over the strip of skin that peeked out from between the hem of her jeans and the top of her boot, tracing over her ankle again and again, a touch both tender and familiar.

He might have had her by the ankle, but her damn emotions had her by the throat.

Wyatt went on like that until the song was beginning to fade out, completely lost in his own world for another minute or so before his hand tensed around her. He grinned a little foolishly, somehow sensing that he'd been caught without having to chance a look.

"How's the head, Luce?"

"Better," she answered blearily. Her exhaustion was undeniable, but the throbbing pain had numbed itself into a quiet buzz. "How did this...I, um, don't remember lying down."

"Last concussion check," he smirked down at her for a second, all cockeyed and mischievous in his usual teasing manner, but there was a fondness to his words that she didn't miss. "You were in a serious fog the last time I pulled over. Your pupils may have passed the test, but if I didn't know any better, I would have sworn you were drunk off your ass when I woke you up."

"Did I…" Lucy smoothed a hand over her hair, not surprised to find it wild and knotted, "...just tell me if I should be embarrassed, okay? I don't really remember any of that."

The dimness of the truck's interior did nothing to obscure his softening smile. "Nah, you have nothing to worry about. Just some incoherent rambling that I honestly couldn't understand a word of. It was cute."

Another smothering wave of affection hit her sharply. There should be nothing cute about drool on her face or garbled babbling or matted hair. He had to be messing with her. That was the only option.

"I've been told that I talk in my sleep sometimes," she admitted with a grudging sigh. "So that would explain the rambling."

Wyatt's expression shifted back into crooked asshole mode. "Really? Guess I'm usually too worn out to notice."

She yanked her feet out of his lap, briefly considering a swift kick to the crotch to let him know what she thought about that comment.

As always, he was one step ahead, hitching his thigh up a little higher as a means of protection. "This vehicle goes off the road and we're both toast, ma'am."

Lucy mumbled a slur of several disconnected noises, none of which formed even a rough sketch of a sensible counterargument. She pried herself upward and settled back into a normal sitting position, unimpressed with the same view that had been on display before her catnap - a dark and desolate highway that seemed to lead nowhere. "How much longer?"

"One last pit stop and then we'll be there in no time."

"And why are we stopping now?" she asked around a languorous yawn.

"Mostly because I've been hovering on E for the last thirty minutes."

"Hovering on..?" she glanced down at the dash and then whipped her eyes back up to him. "Really, Wyatt? You would be the type to not stop till it's limping into a gas station."

There was something unexpectedly carnal in the smile that inched over his face. "And you'd be the type to nag me about it every single time we drove anywhere. The bossy know-it-all who polices all my favorite road trip gambles."

He might as well have strung a Do Not Cross sign between them, setting off a flash of warning with the dangerous daydream he was painting in her mind. She grasped desperately for a segue, a means of escape to spring her away from sunny vacations, a matching set of suitcases, silly arguments over a GPS that never quite worked right. There had to be some useful diversion to cancel out the unlikely future that was tormenting her, the far-fetched image of his bronzed arm draped across the steering wheel as they negotiated their course together.

Nagging. She would just do more nagging. Surely he couldn't _actually_ enjoy her biting pessimism.

"Aren't you supposed to have some higher level of fanboy reverence for a vehicle like this?"

"What, so fanboy reverence somehow means that you can't occasionally push the limits and try for…" Wyatt scanned her profile for a long moment, seeming to weigh his words with an uncharacteristic caution, "...for more?"

It was safe to say that Lucy could mark that segue down as the worst attempted transition of all time. There was no misinterpreting what he'd really meant, and even as she squirmed in her seat and plead with herself to let the conversation drop away into silence, her mouth was refusing to cooperate. "But what if the truck falls apart because it...maybe it was on its last leg, and you pushed too hard?"

"That's the thing about a quality model, Luce. Doesn't matter how much time passes - you invest a little elbow grease, give it a little love, and she's good to go all over again. These things are built to last as long as they're properly taken care of." His silk-strung insinuation faltered there, giving way to a blip of uncertainty. "That last part is important, though. Some people don't know a good thing when they have it."

She wasn't going another round on that analogy. It was another admission of his mistakes, an echo of his hidden message in Providence - _only a goddamn fool would take his eyes off the one I've got_. If he was a fool, then so was she. He wasn't the only one who'd walked away from a good thing, the _best_ thing. Keeping that admission to herself was becoming more and more complicated with every mile marker they passed. Lucy curled her hands against the edge of the seat and focused her gaze on the open road that stretched ahead through the windshield, feeling about as secure in herself as the tumbleweeds that rollicked errantly in the distance.

Their pit stop at the gas station passed with little fanfare, other than Wyatt being strangely persistent in his suggestion that she use the unseemly hole-in-a-wall bathroom in a grimy corner of the attached convenience store. Then they were off again, ascending on a sparse stretch of pavement that barely clung to the side of a rising mountain range. The progressive climb in altitude sent the engine into overdrive, a loud rumble that filled the whole cab, graciously drowning out the internal noise of her circling thoughts.

"Can you at least tell me what state we're in?" Lucy called above the racket.

"That would be Texas, ma'am," he replied with a contented grin.

Either he was having another laugh at her expense, or she'd slept through far more of this trip than she'd realized. "Wait, really?"

" _Really_. New Mexico sends its regards, by the way."

Fragments of understanding began to converge together in her brain, forming an unforeseen picture that made her jittery with anticipation. The way he navigated without a map, his eerie knowledge of just how long he could try his luck on a practically bone-dry gas tank…

"Are we...is this - "

Wyatt smirked at her fumble of a question. "The Franklin Mountains, just north of El Paso?"

She nodded, blinking in owlish concentration.

"You've got it."

"So the safe house is…" he didn't hop in this time, which meant she had to push through her tentative curiosity all on her own, "...your family cabin?"

"Wouldn't exactly call it a safe house, but it'll do the trick for the night. Jiya knows where it is, and she'll be smart enough to put two and two together once she takes a look at a map."

That seemed like a fairly sizable mental jump to Lucy, but they'd proved her wrong quite a few times by now. Wyatt and Jiya read each other brilliantly, a role that had once been hers to claim.

It was only a few more minutes before he was turning up a winding dirt road, and while Lucy was still straining her eyes to make out the slim outline of a building up ahead, Wyatt was already shifting into park. He stopped her from mirroring his movements, a hand closing over her arm before she could reach for the door handle.

"I'll do a quick check around, okay? Make sure we don't have any unwanted company...and to make sure _we_ aren't the unwanted company. The last thing I need is some trigger-happy uncle chasing me off of my own property. You stay here." He moved to make his dismount from the truck, then stopped up short. His eyes were unyielding in their purpose as he drew his gun and held it out to her. "And hold onto this."

Lucy shrank back, making no move to accept the weapon. "Aren't you way more likely to need that thing than I am?"

"I can defend myself without it."

"But - "

He squeezed her arm and offered a weathered smile. "I'll be fine and so will you. Just take the gun."

She did as told, hating it for every single second that she sat alone, anxiously awaiting his return...and downright queasy at the idea of a struggle reaching her ears long before his slinking silhouette could find its way back to the vehicle. Her eyes burned as the minutes ticked by, but Lucy refused to look way even though she had little hope of separating him from the blur of shadows in the distance.

A sudden rap against her window had her leaping out of her skin, swiveling sideways to level the handgun right at Wyatt's chin.

"How the - "

"Come on," he said with a barely muffled chuckle, opening her door and coaxing her out onto her feet. "It's clear."

"How did you do that? I was watching the whole time. There's no way you could have walked back over here without me seeing you."

"The general idea is to _not_ be seen." He shook his head, an eyebrow lifting across his forehead. "Just give me that gun before you hurt yourself."

They trudged toward the cabin side-by-side, an odd, shiftless energy falling over them. That feeling intensified as he led her through a lopsided doorway and into the bare-bulbed cubbyhole of a living room. She squinted around the confined space, almost plowing straight into a low slant in the roof line before Wyatt caught her elbow and jerked her sideways.

Lucy didn't so much as flinch at the redirection, not even when he held on for far longer than necessary. "You were here for five whole months? _How_?"

"There've been some updates in the last 40 years, real indoor plumbing being among them."

"Did you say what I think you just said?"

"Yep. Why do you think I herded you into that gas station bathroom a few miles back?" Before she could respond, Wyatt was giving her a not-so-subtle nudge toward an ugly plaid sofa, his words as unyielding as the hand on her arm. "Now please sit down before you give yourself a second knock to the noggin. You're an accident waiting to happen in here."

He turned away in a whirlwind of dust and cobwebs, yanked open a cupboard, and began pulling down a worn set of flannel sheets.

Lucy glanced from side to side, seeing no door apart from the one they'd just come through. "Where's the bed?"

"You're sitting on it."

"Does it...pull out, then?"

If that embarrassing choice of wording registered for him, he did a hell of a job at concealing it beneath a half dozen layers of stoicism. "Yes."

She cast a wary look down at the threadbare cushions beneath her. "Into a double?"

"Uh, close…? But not quite." He dropped a pile of blankets next to her, then returned to the cupboard to shake out one solitary pillow. _Great_.

"So…"

"We're not sharing, I know." Now he sounded straight-up irritated, but he was trying to shove it down and bury it, the effect of which made every word sound like it was ground out from between his molars. "I wouldn't dream of suggesting such a thing."

Lucy scanned the cabin again, as if another piece of furniture was magically going to spring up before her eyes. "But...there's nowhere else, Wyatt. And don't say the floor. There'll hardly be any floor left once this thing is unfolded."

"I don't need to sleep. It's safer if I don't, actually."

Wyatt gestured for her to get up, cranking the bed frame out from beneath lumpy couch cushions as soon as she was safely out of the way. There was something about him in this place that was getting to her, a phantom image of his months spent alone here, nursing the heart she'd broken...the way he just _knew_ exactly where everything was despite the gap in years, how he negotiated the limited floor plan without a shred of hesitation…

Not to mention the view of his back muscles straining against the fabric of his shirt.

Lucy wrenched her eyes away from him and inhaled a cloud of musty air. "Do you need any help with that?"

"Nope."

Her gaze gradually trickled back over to where he was hauling out the long metal frame with a teeth-gritted grunt. "Tell me this same couch isn't still here in our time. I don't know how that would even be possible."

"It's not," he said from over his shoulder, an actual laugh crinkling unexpectedly in the corners of his eyes. "But it was here when I was a kid. It's a freaking bear to get back in each morning. Made every last Sherwin man curse a blue streak, even the Bible thumpers. It was far safer to stay outside and out of the way."

"A bear to get in? Doesn't look too easy to get _out_ either," she countered with an arched brow.

"Why do you think I'm not letting you near this thing?" he tossed back, his contrived smirk contrasting against the ridge of raised veins along his neck. "You'd definitely have a full-on concussion by now, and we're officially more than an hour away from a functioning hospital."

Wyatt gave one last tug on that dinosaur of a sleeper sofa, and in that one impressive flex of his biceps, it finally gave up the fight. She stepped forward, determined to not take no for an answer when it came to making the bed. The instant tightening around his mouth didn't escape her notice as she approached.

"I'll stay right here," she said with a slow nod, waving an open palm at one side of the thin mattress. "No low hanging beams or slanted ceilings within striking distance. Promise."

He mumbled some form of acquiescence, eyes floating up to her bruised forehead for a split-second before he tossed a corner of bedding her way.

The simplicity of their task - tucking the fitted sheet from edge to edge, fluffing out the top sheet and securing it into place, a thick wool blanket coming unspooled from his hand to hers - soothed something inside of Lucy. There was an implicit harmony to each movement, an unspoken ease that had once characterized every encounter she had with him...an ease that seemed bound to break as soon as either of them opened their mouths and started talking again. But maybe it wouldn't be like that this time. She was too spent to pick a fight at this point, too emotionally vacant to unearth the resentment that usually sparked at the margins of their every interaction, and somehow that exhaustion was working in her favor. It made her want to reach out and touch him, to do whatever she could to relax the clash of restless energy in his face. It was a near foreign urge, one she'd repressed for so long, but apparently it was much closer to the surface than she'd realized.

It didn't take much searching to see that Wyatt was not in the same headspace. With a brisk toss of the pillow, his handiwork was complete, head jerking automatically toward the door. "So if you need the outhouse, just get me and I - "

"Where are you going? The truck?"

His face was granite, unreadable. "The porch. Truck's too far away to provide decent surveillance."

"The _porch_? What porch? That's a two-by-four step, Wyatt."

"It's rude to come to a man's cabin and tell him whether or not he has a porch, Lucy," he deadpanned right back at her.

She planted herself between him and the lone exit, steadfast and unamused. "Stay. We can figure something out. It's cold, plus I'll feel weird sleeping alone in here."

He folded his arms over his chest and cocked an incredulous brow. "Being alone in _here_? Weird, says the woman who locked herself up in a one-room apartment a good 5,000 miles away from everyone she's ever known?"

"Go ahead, let me have it," she said with a shrug. "We've got nowhere else to be, no one to interrupt us, and you damn well have every right to be mad about that, so go ahead - yell at me. Tell me what you really think."

Wyatt shook his head and stared blankly ahead, his gaze trained somewhere just above her shoulder. "I really think you should let me out of here."

"Then move me."

That was enough to knock his eyes right to hers. "What?"

Lucy was just as dumbfounded by those words as he was. Maybe the knot on her head really had shaken some critical piece of her brain loose. She swallowed a little dryly but found herself holding firm, incapable of talking herself down from whatever the hell had just overtaken her. "Move me. Because I'm not letting you sleep outside on a plank of plywood without a showdown."

His eyebrows drew together in a flash of furious skepticism, but just as as Lucy geared up for another round, his shoulders deflated and the fight physically drained away from his face. He sank backwards onto the edge of the mattress, eyes to the floor, defeat weighing against him. "I don't know what you want from me, Lucy. This...I'm trying to play by your rules, and I'm telling you, _this_ is not a good idea tonight."

The crack of desperation in his voice shoved her right off the ledge of logic. A shuffling step or two forward and she was there, lowering herself next to him, allowing gravity and a saggy old bed - and apparently every force of the universe - to bring them unreasonably close. She covered his hand with hers, wrapping her fingers over his clenched fist. "And _I'm_ telling you that it's okay, Wyatt."

His eyes stole upwards, rounded with harrowing confusion, seemingly awaiting a dose of clarification that she wasn't able to drum up for him or for herself. He shifted as if to add a sliver of space between them, but the protest of rusted springs didn't relent. His eyes climbed higher and paused right at her hairline, reassessing the bruise on her forehead for what very well may have been the thousandth time since he'd rescued her in Phoenix.

"What happened to you in that theater? When I first saw you, I thought..." he sighed and glanced away. "Someone hit you _this hard_ , but didn't finish the job? Believe me, grateful doesn't even begin to cover how I feel about that, but it...it doesn't add up."

"I ran as soon as I realized what was going on," she answered quietly. "I thought I could get help, find a street cop or something, but instead I ran right into a few of Rittenhouse's finest. They were pretty intent in dragging me off through that theater until the hellfire you were unleashing on Emma's other guys pulled them away. Apparently I'm supposed to be delivered to her alive, so when it became clear that I wasn't going anywhere easily, they - well, they needed to be sure I wouldn't be moving until they could go deal with you."

Wyatt swallowed a little too loudly. He ran his hand over his face, closing himself off from view. "Butt of a gun?"

She nodded, then caught the futility of that action when she chanced another glimpse of him. "Yeah."

"I...You have no idea how sorry I am, Lucy."

"It was an ambush. You couldn't have - "

"It's more than that," he broke in heavily, his hand sliding away to reveal the downpour that hovered at the brink of his lashes. "If you...if I brought you into all of this just to lose you, if I uprooted you from where you were happy and - and…"

If she'd been happy without him in Bayeux, that was news to her. "Wyatt..."

"I would never forgive myself, Lucy. Never. I can't be the reason you die."

"I'm _fine_ ," she insisted with a squeeze to his still-closed fist, "and even if I wasn't, you still wouldn't be the reason that something happened. We both know they would come and do the job eventually no matter where I go or what I do. Emma will never rest until I'm wiped out one way or another, right? In their minds…? As long as I'm alive, I pose a threat."

Where those words were supposed to provide assurance, there was only another level of inner decay twisting across his features. The first tear trembled down his cheek and she was undone.

"Wyatt," she murmured as she eased just a breath closer, his leg pressing warm and solid to hers. "Hey, it's…it's okay. You saved me, alright? Whatever it is you were doing, it was enough to stop them from taking me. You found me, you got me to safety…"

He blew out a dismissive chuckle, self-deprecation radiating off of him.

"You did. I'm still here because of you."

"Doesn't change the fact that you never should have been alone with those bastards in the first place."

Her words were bouncing right off of his ears, landing in a broken heap all around them. She didn't know what else to do, what else to say, not when he was so dead set on carrying the responsibility for something that hadn't even happened.

She let go of his fist and allowed her hands to roam up to his jaw, recapturing the rough trademarked stubble that she'd missed so badly. It hadn't taken more than a day or two after his baby-faced shave, and then here he was, the prickling texture she remembered so distinctly - brushing against her cheek, rasping over her breasts, anchoring itself between her quivering legs.

Lucy ignored his sudden exhale of astonishment that warmed her face, holding fast to his jawline as he flinched between her hands. "You know, I may have exaggerated my feelings about the beard. It wasn't so bad. But this…"

"This is how you like it most, huh?" He was working so hard to match her lighter tone, but the attempted drawl in his voice was still engulfed by a sea of lament.

And God did it ever feel ridiculous to admit it out loud, but her dignity had apparently gotten lost somewhere between state lines. "What can I say? The scruff suits you."

One corner of his mouth wriggled higher, but that was it. The extent of his satisfaction burned out before it could truly catch fire.

"Wyatt…"

He glanced down at his lap, brow furrowed harshly. "I've been trying, Lucy. I have been trying so damn hard to respect your feelings, but I...I can't keep pretending that - "

Neither could she. Not right now, anyway.

She intercepted the fragments of his broken plea, exchanged his conflicted agony for the compelling vertigo of a kiss that had been waiting in the wings of her imagination every damn day for more than a year.

Wyatt shifted away with his lips parted in a frozen inhale, clearly overcome. His eyes were so soft, so confused, that they virtually begged for explanation.

But she had nothing to give him, no simple utterance that was worthy of capturing each swirl of longing that played across her heartstrings. The bristle of his whiskers beneath her fingertips summoned her forward. _Again_ , she heard with each lilting incantation that hummed through her bloodstream. A tuning fork had been struck between them, resounding of an anthem she'd once known so well. _Kiss him again_.

He seemed to tumble apart when her lips sank against his for a vivid encore. His body curved into hers as he reclaimed her slowly, long fingers fitting against the contour of her neck, a scarce dart of his tongue stealing across her own. Hesitancy shook loose with each pass of her mouth, freeing him shackle for shackle until he split off from her with a gasp.

It was different this time. He wanted her. She knew he did, but it was all on display now, open and without restrictions. His fingers itched higher as he stared at her, searching through the hair at her nape, drawing her back in before she had a chance to catch her breath.

But there would be time for breathing later. For now all she needed was more of him, more of his orbiting kisses, his luminous desire, the marvelous pressure of his weight coming to rest over her. He rearranged her across the bed with subtle cues. A light touch to her hip, the prod of his forehead, another deep dive of his tongue that moved in perfect synchronization to the stroke of a hand that never left her hair. She may have started this mad exercise in spontaneity, but Wyatt was sure as hell committed to the act of bringing it home, leaving no question as to what he wanted as he settled himself firmly along the seam of her jeans. One rock of his hips and she was already swept away. The clothes he helped her shed were a mere formality, a forgone conclusion.

Lucy let the hymn of his name slip from her lips again and again, her head tossed back as his mouth moved along the peaks and valleys of her body, marking and mapping her skin without preference or direction. She tore at what remained of his clothing, aimless in her pursuit, too distracted to be effective. Wyatt paused above her, eyes eclipsed in a haze that she felt through and through. There was a lightning-quick kiss to her collarbone, and then he was removing everything he could reach - his jeans and hers, the shirt she'd pushed across his shoulders, the thin white tee he wore beneath his button down.

When his thumbs hooked through the elastic of her underwear, his voice was almost indiscernibly low. "Now would be a good time to speak up if you don't really want this."

Her hands slid down his sculpted arms until she could grip each of his wrists. "If you don't take them off, I will."

The arch of his eyebrows spoke of his surprise, but the groan lodged in his throat communicated nothing but approval. He dragged the soft cotton down her legs with unmistakable adoration, and then he was hovering over her once more, not a single obstacle left between them.

She couldn't let him ask again. Couldn't let herself think, or else she might think her way right out of what naturally came next. With a fluidity she so rarely possessed, Lucy reached between them, arched herself higher, and took every last inch of him.

Wyatt swore furiously into her neck, sweat beading across her skin - his sweat, hers, theirs. She couldn't speak, couldn't do anything but emit the same chest-deep cry of indulgence over and over again. The scratch of sheets beneath her might as well of been finely spun gold, for every pitch and sigh of Wyatt's body had her bathed in light, surrounded by an extravagance she'd never found elsewhere.

Through each swell and collapse of pleasure, Lucy was sure there was no stronghold on earth that could withstand an attack as intricately formed as this - the disarming force of his body declaring its devotion to hers in a language that required no words. It was everything she'd once discarded, everything she'd craved from the moment she last left his bed.


	9. A Revival of Good Conscience

_a/n: GUYS. The response to the last chapter had me rolling :) Still hoping to bounce back with some replies tomorrow, but life has been crazy and is about to get crazier, so no guarantees. I'm hoping to post one more chapter by Friday at the latest, and then I'll be vacationing for a week, so hold tight - I promise there's plenty more drama (and angst) in the works for when I return! THANK YOU FOR YOUR ONGOING SUPPORT!_

* * *

"Lucy...hey, wake up." The hand on her shoulder tightened, prodding her gently away from another world. "It's time to go, okay?"

Wyatt...Wyatt had been in her dream. Kissing her against the arch of her door in Bayeux. Trapping her hips with his. Smirking against her mouth, hands splayed wide, encompassing so much of her in one simple stroke of his deft fingers.

It was a fantasy that had taunted her many times before. He'd come to her, he'd forgive her, he'd love her.

Just as she was allowing that irresistible vision to carry her away again, the rustling at her shoulder returned. "Lucy? Jiya's here, and as glad as I am to go stall her for you while you get dressed, that's only helpful if you _actually_ start getting dressed."

Her eyes blinked open to regard the purest - and _realest_ \- shade of blue, momentarily awestruck that he was actually here. But in another blink or two, the inky silence of a primitive wood shack came into focus behind him, a far cry from the picturesque village she'd called home for most of the last year.

 _Texas_. She was in Texas, it was 1980, and they'd been stranded together for just long enough to have her throwing fistfuls of caution to the so-called wind. Which was really just a kinder way of saying that she'd thrown herself at _him_. Guess that part of the dream had been pretty damn real.

"Are you okay?" Wyatt asked with a worried crease diving between his brows. He cupped her head in his hand, a hesitant thumb tracing close to her temple. "Do you know where you are?"

Oh, dammit. Head injury. Right.

"I - I'm fine. And I know where I am. I remember - "

 _Everything_. She remembered every last fiery compulsion that had led to his body enrapturing hers.

"I remember what happened," she finished weakly. "Go talk to Jiya and I'll be out in a minute."

"You're sure?"

Lucy clutched the blanket higher, gaze straying sideways to avoid the siege of his wide-eyed concern. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm good."

His hand slid away from her with palpable reluctance, then he was up, pulling his shirt on as he maneuvered around the bed, the last bit of clothing not yet in place. He glanced back with a contemplative half-smile, an expression that settled over her like a cannonball to her chest.

It happened. It really happened. They'd slept together, she'd initiated it, and he was...well at the very least, he was half-smiling. What she chose to do next would probably be the difference between the ripening of a much larger grin or a debilitating frown that might just break his face in two.

Lucy watched uneasily as Wyatt shuffled outside with a nod to himself. A nod, a smile, a demeanor that reflected none of the churning pandemonium that crashed against her.

If she thought about it, she might hyperventilate herself back into unconsciousness, so she wasn't thinking about it at all. It was sex and it was over. Case closed.

But the air in the cabin was freezing, making it damn near impossible to pry herself out of a still-warm bed and into her clothes...clothes that should have been scattered wildly all around the room, but were actually folded neatly at the foot of the bed.

 _Wyatt_. He'd collected them up from the floor just as diligently as he'd tossed them there, laying out each garment within reach to make her life a little easier.

He was good. Too damn good to be real. Case _not_ closed.

Her determination to get herself covered - sweater on, jeans zipped and buttoned, shoes jammed into place - increased tenfold. The chill in the air was nothing compared to the icy tension racing up her spine. This had changed everything. Sex _always_ changed everything. She was reliving the same nightmare as before, the one that was far more powerful than any fantasy of being loved again. It was the fear of losing herself to someone, to _anyone_ , who could destroy her in three words or less.

No one could ever possess that same amount of leverage over her again. She wouldn't allow it.

The telltale creak of that shoddy porch of his announced her presence in just one step. Wyatt's attention shifted back to her immediately, the lights of the Mothership effectively obscuring his face from view. "All ready?"

"Shouldn't we, umm...tidy up, or something?"

God, did she ever hope the tapestry of surrounding shadows would hide her reddening skin as well as it masked him.

He stepped forward just enough to illuminate his lazy grin, making her rethink that whole wish for more hiding. "If I know my crazy-ass relatives, they'll shamelessly strip that truck for parts and blame the rest of it on wayward teenagers who've been granted way too much freedom."

"That's all? You're not worried about it?"

"Not at all. My Uncle Ray will probably install a new lock, and the rest of 'em will take turns sitting up here with a shotgun for a few nights until the whole thing is forgotten entirely."

"Did I hear that right?" Jiya emerged from the depths of the time machine with a teasing look of disgust. "First the NASCAR stuff, now crazy uncles with shotguns? You are _so_ an undercover redneck, Wyatt Logan."

He shrugged, eyes rolling back to Jiya. "What can I say? Guilty as charged."

Jiya narrowed her gaze, eyes skipping back and forth between Wyatt and Lucy. What had started off as lighthearted banter was beginning to shift into something that resembled _actual_ disgust. "Let me guess...that hillbilly shed of yours came with only one bed, didn't it?"

Lucy scanned herself frantically, relieved to see everything zipped and buttoned, each article of clothing arranged with proper care. Another quick glance at Wyatt revealed that his appearance hadn't given them away either, so how had -

A self-conscious touch to the top of her head was all it took to identify at least one clue. His hands plundering through her hair had taken its usual unruliness and transformed it into a volume-infused hive of absurdity. Essentially, she was now the perfect candidate for a covert operation to the '80s. What a shame it was to think that she was on her way out.

Where Wyatt was clumsily trying to talk their way out of Jiya's barbed speculation, Lucy was ready to do anything _but_ talk. No thinking, no talking, no inviting another sliver of scrutiny. She would take hold of the salvation that was autopilot, the merciful setting she'd defaulted to after Providence and hadn't once let slip until the undeniable hex of this cabin had scrambled her senses.

She blew through their eggshell-ridden conversation, one she'd adamantly shut out altogether. With an ease that had been coming more and more naturally to her, Lucy hoisted herself up to where Jiya lorded herself over them, breaking in with a question that would hopefully cut right past the rest of it. "So where to this time? I doubt I get any say in the matter, but I'd really like to double back to the safe house that had a view of the ocean."

Lucy could practically feel Jiya's unwillingness to turn the conversation away from the point she so clearly wanted to make - a point of searing disapproval - but something more urgent took over instead.

"Sorry, but I'm actually not here to take you home," she confessed with a sigh. "The two of you better have gotten some rest, because Rittenhouse is out again. We're off to the 1760s this time."

Wyatt's disgruntled groan had Lucy desperately missing another groan - a groan that would have less to do with back-to-back jumps, and more to do with anything that involved a trip to the 18th Century. Who would ever thought that she could actually ache over the loss of Rufus's incessant griping so acutely?

She did her best to snap out of that rising tide of melancholy, striving for some level of practicality as she took her seat and tucked her rumpled hair behind her ears. "So costumes are going to be hard on this one. We really shouldn't be spotted in - "

"Look behind you."

How she'd missed a few yards of balled-up petticoats stashed behind her seat, she really couldn't say, although the dull pain of a raised bruise and only a few hours of decent sleep were probably on the short roster of potential explanations.

"I grabbed some of your stuff from when we were in Atlanta," Jiya explained while taking her own chair. "Same for Wyatt. I know it's a more than a hundred years off from where we're going, but - "

"But nothing. It's way better than blue jeans. Good thinking."

"Thanks." She swiveled around to regard Lucy with solemn eyes, voice crackling with sudden candor. "I'm glad you guys are okay. Both of you. It wasn't easy...leaving like that, I mean. That plan always made perfect sense right up until the second I had to commit to it."

The lump in Lucy's throat was now competing in size with the lump on her head. "I'd like to claim that we totally had the situation under control, but I was out cold for most of it, so…"

She chuckled wryly as she trailed off, but Jiya didn't return the laugh.

"Yeah, so I heard. Wyatt mentioned that when he - " she paused, head tilting to frown past Lucy and out into the darkness. "Wyatt? Are you getting your ass in here or what?"

Lucy turned her full concentration to the task of fastening her harness, not at all interested in learning what it was that had kept Wyatt from climbing aboard and throwing in his two cents. Not that she really needed to look at him to form an educated guess. His eyes were essentially scorching a trail down her face from where he stood at ground level.

He didn't answer Jiya. Not audibly, anyhow. He came scuffling up the side of the Mothership after another beat of silence, brushing against Lucy's knees on his way to his chair, a touch that had to be pretty damn deliberate given the extra space that this machine afforded them.

It didn't matter. No amount of brooding or begging would shake her. They had a job to do, another era of history to defend, and whatever it was that had unfolded between them a few hours ago had to be secondary to all of that.

* * *

His head had been so far out of the game that it was a wonder he'd returned with all of his limbs attached. A tedious string of bruises was bound to appear across his ribcage by tomorrow morning, but for every bit of anguish Wyatt was nursing on the inside, a bit of outward damage felt rather inconsequential by comparison.

Every sign Lucy had given him in the past six hours all pointed toward one very fatal result. One night. Just a single damn night, one to add to their two others, none of which were ever going to accumulate into anything that resembled a hopeful future.

No matter how he'd tried to corner her, to wrestle some sort of indicator as to where her head was at following their time together in Texas, Lucy had stiffly soldiered on as if his repeated attempts to talk had been nonexistent. Where there was no other excuse to avoid him, she skillfully rattled off more facts about Colonial America than he'd ever heard in thirteen years of tortuous public education. He'd give her credit there. If knowledge was a weapon, she sure as hell knew how to wield it. Between her scathing evasion and the beating he'd taken from a few stooges in triangle hats and knee socks, this jump was rapidly going down as one he wanted to thoroughly erase from his memory, which was sent him to the showers first. Not his usual M.O. with Jiya and Lucy as his current comrades in arms, but washing _her_ off of him was a matter of vital self-preservation, one he made no apologies for.

Not that either of them left much room for apologizing anyway. Amid Jiya's judgmental side-eyeing and Lucy's tight-lipped refusal to acknowledge him, there was really no point in explaining. He locked himself away and let the steam build a barricade between him and the rest of the world. Just a few minutes of quiet to regain himself was all it would take; he could reset, start fresh, give his insubordinate brain a kick in the ass. He had to, or he was going to get pummeled just as badly on the next jump and the one after that, on and on until he either learned his lesson or spent a few months in a full body cast.

But for whatever sparse bit of clear head space he'd been able to reclaim under the scalding spray of hot water, his equilibrium was skewed in mere seconds once he was back in his room. The door had barely shut before it squeaked open again with the momentum of Lucy's light knock. Wyatt glanced over his shoulder, pulling the towel from around his neck and letting it hit the desk beside him with a soft plunk. "Hey."

"Hey yourself." Dark eyes roved over him, absorbing his wet hair, the thin white t-shirt, a halfway crooked pair of sleep pants slung lazily against his hips, but never once touched down on his face.

If it hadn't been for his two female companions and one cramped parcel of a hallway, there wouldn't have been anything on him but boxer briefs, if that. He was exhausted, just a breath away from becoming flagrantly careless. Too much fighting and driving and then more fighting - along with a frightening sense of disquiet that hit him every time he considered an uncharacteristically impassive Lucy - had mixed poorly with the filmy hour or so of rest he'd stolen in the small hours of the night.

Sleeping with Lucy had somehow kept him from being able to find actual sleep next to her. His body had been damn near comatose, but his mind - _his heart_ \- couldn't shut down afterwards. He was too consumed with her flawless white skin awash in moonlight, her hypnotic breathing, the slim warmth of her loose-limbed body stealing over his abdomen. She'd turned eventually, leaving her spot on his chest to roll away from him with a sleepy hum, and her bare back had lured him right after her, bringing him onto his side to loop himself around her small frame. And eventually, with her hair caught in the fringe of his whiskery cheek, his arm slackening gradually over her waist, he'd nodded off at last...

Only to be dragged awake a short time later by the glowing clamor of a time machine touching down on soft Texas earth. Leaving that bed had nearly brought on a toddler-like fit of refusal.

If her fixed attention now - from where she was draped temptingly against the doorpost - offered any barometer for the likelihood of another night spent twined together, then those halfway crooked sleep pants of his might disappear even faster than his exhaustion. There was more than one way to recharge after a long-ass day or two on the job. He'd gladly work it off just as well as he'd sleep it off.

"Can I help you...ma'am?"

He watched the way his final word riffled through her, amazed at how that familiar summon of a title never became stale for either of them.

Lucy's confidence seemed to take a momentary dip before she sealed the door shut behind her. Those damn long legs of hers unfurled over the stretch of warped farmhouse floors, bringing her closer to him second by second. His hands framed her hips as soon as she was within reach, holding her still so he could chase her wandering gaze. "You here to keep me company tonight?"

She nodded, a hand rising to palm against his chest.

Another half of a second and Wyatt would have closed the deal without question, but something - a revival of good conscience, a recovered delay in his lust-ridden brain - drove him to make one last attempt at catching her eyes before he flung himself into the abyss. She dodged him, angling her face downward, denying him a view of anything but eyelashes.

"Lucy," he breathed out severely.

Her lips were hard against his, startlingly insistent and precise. He tightened his hold on her, squeezing once to expel a wave of heat from his fingertips.

"Hold on," he murmured against her mouth, tipping his forehead to hers. "We should - "

She knotted fingers through his hair and tugged him back in, eliciting a groan from deep in his throat. His pelvis jumped forward on instinct, the steady drone of his desire beginning to climb higher and higher. He kissed her. He had to. He needed - he needed…

He needed to stop letting her drown out his last thread of common sense.

"Lucy - "

She bit down on his lip and didn't let go. It was punishing. It was goddamn sexy. It was also annoying the absolute hell out of him.

"Wait, dammit - " he threw himself in reverse with all the grace of a clunker in a car chase, not stopping until his back thumped against the wall behind him. "What are you doing? What the hell is this to you?"

Lucy's eyes fluttered to the floor, mouth pursed and heat rising up her neck. "You - you _know_ what I'm doing."

"No, I really don't. I've been trying to talk to you about last night and you won't hear a word of it. You've barely looked me in the eye all damn day. You can't even look at me _now_."

Nothing, not a sound. She was drilling a hole in the floor with an avoidance that was practically violent in nature.

Wyatt softened his tone, doing everything he could to remove the accusation from his voice. "So are we talking about this or aren't we? "

"There's nothing to talk about," she said to the planks beneath her feet.

"What exactly was your plan tonight? Just some sloppy attempt at friends with benefits? Pretty damn hard to do that when we aren't even friends anymore, isn't it?" Her backward flinch at that statement did nothing to derail the soul-sucking unraveling of his heart. "So I'll ask it again - what the hell is this to you? I'll be a lot of things, Lucy, but I won't be your fuck buddy."

Her face tightened into a smile he didn't recognize, eyes chipped with ice as her gaze darted upward. "Don't remember you having any issue with it last night."

"Last night," he seethed in return, pushing off the wall and stalking closer, "wasn't about _fucking_. I don't care if it's cheesy as all hell - we made love last night, and nothing you tell me now can convince me otherwise."

Her arms folded over her chest, a physical barricade to reinforce the wall she'd constructed around her heart. "Right, and _I'm_ the know-it-all..."

"That's it? That's…" he floundered, too angry to see or hear or think straight. It was no secret that she felt the need to guard herself against him. The divide had been there all along, from the moment he'd sat down at that cafe table in France and plead his case with her. He knew where he stood. She'd told him it couldn't be the same this time, had pushed him away and away and away…

And just when he'd convinced himself that the distance was finally on its way to becoming a thing of the past, she did this. She gave him one glimpse of heaven before kicking him straight back to hell.

Wyatt turned his back to her, voice trampled and broken-down, barely intelligible to his own ears. "Just go. If that's all the more you want, then please just - just go."

Another Lucy would have breathed his name in a manner that was just as afflicted and jumbled as his own tangle of conflicted feelings. That Lucy may have touched his back, his arm, his shoulder. She would have tried to explain, or at least whispered that she was sorry. She'd linger an extra moment, debating if it was possible to leave things on such shaky ground without doing irreparable damage. Something. The Lucy of before would have done _something_.

But the Lucy of after - the Lucy he'd lost - was already gone, allowing the door to slam shut behind her without a second thought.

* * *

 _a/n : did anyone *really* think this would be smooth sailing so soon? (my apologies if your answer was yes...)_


	10. Aboveboard

_a/n: Alright, fellow members of the Lyattverse - we've reached the last update for a little while, and I'll just apologize upfront for cutting it here, but vacation is calling! As always, I'm infinitely grateful for your likes & comments :)_

* * *

The farmhouse should have been Lucy's favorite base of operations to date. It was cozy and quaint, somehow preserving most of its original charm over what she imagined had been a very long lifetime. The attached barn had been converted to store and maintain the Mothership, leaving the bones of the actual house untouched. It was a home, a real one, nothing like the utilitarian steel traps she usually found herself in.

Unfortunately, the concept of cozy and quaint basically translated into house arrest now. Wyatt wanted as little to do with her as possible, and with the small bedrooms crowding on top of an even smaller bathroom, as well as having their whole supply of food and drink stored in a cramped runway of a galley kitchen, there was no escaping each other. And of course that meant Emma had chosen to take an ill-timed sabbatical for God knows what reason, leaving them to unwillingly bump shoulders for days on end without reprieve.

It wasn't long before Lucy was sneaking out as often as possible, indulging in the nameless green hills and big skies of their current location, even straying as far as a small produce stand down the road where she did nothing but browse clusters of bright flowers and rows of shiny apples. She wasn't foolish enough to think her unsanctioned getaways went unnoticed. Twice she came back to a disapproving scowl from Wyatt, the fumes of his anger - and his fear - channeling prominently through his clenched jaw, but he said nothing. No warnings, no appeal to her better judgement. He kept his opinions on a rigorously tight leash.

That was how she knew the degree to which she'd really left her mark this time. When Wyatt was too pissed off to lecture her about safety…? Yeah, there was really no bouncing back from that, was there? She'd done it. She'd finally pushed him beyond the point of arguing. He still _wanted_ to, that much was obvious. But he wouldn't do it, wouldn't actually launch into hyper-protective mode, and that meant it was only a matter of time before the instinct wore off altogether. She was finally free of his smothering influence.

It was an empty victory. As empty as prevailing over a bloodthirsty terrorist just to watch a greater evil spring up in his place. Empty like leaving Emma to meander indefinitely in the past, but still having no idea how to reverse what she'd done to Amy. About as empty as being loved by Wyatt Logan for less than twenty-four hours before losing him to Jessica in as much time as it took to receive a single text message.

The dreams wouldn't let up, though, and they weren't just dreams either. Every pent-up flex of his arm sent her into overdrive. His balled up clothes in the laundry basket smelled so potently of him - pine, spice, whatever was so intrinsically _Wyatt_ \- that she could hardly bear to go through and sort out her own things to wash. She couldn't avoid it, could still smell him even when she broke free of the house and tried to lose herself in the vivid scent of fresh grass and wide fields. Just watching his hands wrap around a coffee cup in the mornings, or the outline of his pensive profile as he stoked the logs in the fireplace at night…

Yet another reason to wander off whenever she could get away with it. They were at an impasse, a deadlock of wills, because there was no part of her that could fully label Texas as a mistake. She'd stood at the threshold of his bedroom for a reason on that first night back in the present. Where her heart ceased to function, her body had taken over, whispering with the enticement that the act itself couldn't do any harm. She could handle another night with him so long as it wasn't serious, but _serious_ was his one nonnegotiable.

So they went on, spinning in circles too wide to be contained within the walls of their current living quarters. He'd practically superglued himself to Jiya's side as the days began to meld together, but it wasn't enough to distract either of them from the tireless ripples of discord that were due to boil over at any given moment. She recognized the restraint that twisted him into excruciating knots. It wasn't hard to spot since she was feeling pretty knotted up herself. There had to be a breaking point eventually, some trivial annoyance that would tip the scales toward a volatile screaming match or...or toward another sort of release, one she still could feel between her legs if she concentrated for long enough, eyes closed and breath shallow as she conjured up the illicit memories that would be better off forgotten.

But no matter how many dark clouds gathered in the horizon of Wyatt's eyes as he watched her from across snugly furnished rooms and dimly lit hallways, the storm never came. It was the alarm in the barn that finally went off instead, snapping Lucy so far out of a preoccupied trance that she cracked the wine glass she held in her hand. Wyatt took stock of the situation from where he stood over the sink, a brow raised in silent observation, but he didn't intervene.

It was by no means a disaster. The flute hadn't shattered fully. She didn't have a mess to tend to, no wine was lost, there was no broken skin or any other pending disaster. The situation was more or less under control, even to someone as accident prone as her.

And yet the sight of Wyatt slinking off to the Mothership without addressing the incident - not even stopping to make a well deserved joke at her expense - had her feeling like a capsized passenger without a life vest.

To hell with that. This was what she'd wanted. Arm's length was where Wyatt belonged. Getting out of this house and going anywhere that wasn't tainted with some memory of an advance, even a failed one, would help to reinforce that fact.

Or so she thought until Jiya called out the coordinates. _Texas_. They were going to Houston, Texas. It didn't matter that Houston was about as far away from that damn cabin as you could get without leaving the state. It was still Texas, a word that now created a dangerous hum beneath her skin.

* * *

Apparently there wasn't a goddamn dinner jacket to be found within a five mile radius. At least that was going to be his excuse when Lucy would inevitably turn up and start bitching his ears off about his random medley of mismatched clothing. Finding pants that even came close to fitting had been the quest of a lifetime, and his shirt and tie combo was a fortunate accident he'd pretty much stumbled upon after striking out at several different stores. This was as prim and proper as he was getting with less than an hour's notice, and she'd just have to deal with that.

Just like he was going to have to deal with her in _that_ dress.

She'd appeared in a careening rush, seemingly unaware of the absolute scene she was causing. Or maybe that was just him, because everyone else in the hotel lobby went on laughing and drinking without interruption even though Wyatt was sure that the ground was about to split open and swallow him whole. Scarlet red fabric floated delicately against her skin, hugged her around the hips and tapered off at the knees, but that was hardly the worst of it. The neckline - if you could call it that, seeing as it touched down nowhere near her neck - fluttered into a low ruffled scoop...a scoop that looked like it needed nothing but a gentle breeze to send it fluttering even lower for a view worthy of a few Mardi Gras beads.

"Ah, hell."

Lucy skidded to a stop in front of him, distracted with the task of checking and rechecking the smooth twist at the top of her head. "Did you say something? It's really loud in here, and I wasn't close enough to hear you."

She was definitely close enough now. And getting closer. Her hand clamped against his bicep as she bent slightly to fidget with the strap of one shoe, then the other. Wyatt had to tear his gaze away as her dress drifted farther from her skin, baring a clear shot to -

"Are you okay?"

Her eyes were rimmed with smoky makeup as she peered up at him, playing perfectly to the dark allure of everything he so desperately wanted. She'd somehow found a way to deepen the attraction that was already unimaginably vast, showcasing everything she held back, the hint of a heart she was so intent on concealing.

"Yeah," he answered gruffly as she released him. He cleared his throat and tried again, grappling for a tone of voice that wouldn't blatantly sell him out. "Give me the rundown on this party again?"

"It was a huge deal when NASA decided to build their new site here in Houston - what we know as the Johnson Space Center, although it's actually called the Manned Spacecraft Center for now. Tonight's reception is a big society thing, an official welcome to the astronauts and their families who've just relocated to the city." She paused to take in the wide scope of their surroundings with an unconcealed appreciation that glittered all over her face. "These NASA couples were like American royalty, overnight celebrities. The eyes of the entire country were on them, but...they were really just normal people with normal problems, barely upholding shaky marriages marked by infidelity, ambition, anxiety...the list goes on."

After nearly a week of not hearing more than a handful of words from her at a time, Wyatt was too carried away by the sound of her voice to really latch on to much of what was being said. She caught him staring without focus and ducked her head with a self-conscious smile. "Wyatt? Are you even listening?"

"NASA, celebrities, fancy party," he croaked out unconvincingly. "Got it."

"Sorry, I know I was kind of rambling. It's just...it bugs me to think that behind all the glamour, these women were burdened with the thankless responsibility of uprooting their lives, their kids, all of it, and starting over again. It didn't matter what they wanted. Their husbands were national heroes, and their careers came first."

His brain was finally cooperating, and with that renewed sense of clarity came a truth he knew too personally. "That's no way to live, at least not for very long. It's why I…"

"Why you what?"

"Why I, um...why I wasn't in any hurry to start a family with Jess," he responded uncertainly, silently berating himself for letting a word of this leave his mouth. "We already had enough to deal with, just us. Adding kids to the mix while I was still active duty...I couldn't see how that would make things any better."

Lucy's expression remained unchanged, but the quick twitch of her eyelashes didn't pass his notice. "Do you regret that now?"

Now? Did she mean the now of _right now_ , the now that included a warped copy of the Jessica he'd once known existing somewhere out there, presumably still wreaking unknown havoc under the banner of Rittenhouse? Or was Lucy referring to the old now, the one he'd actually lived, the godforsaken years he'd spent wallowing alone in his grief?

He went with the easier of those two options, although he was fairly confident his answer would be the same either way. "Trust me, I had no business raising a child after what happened. Not in that frame of mind. That kid would've been scarred for life."

"I'm don't know about that," Lucy said quietly. "Not saying it would have been easy, but...I think you would have pulled it together. You never give yourself enough credit."

The din of clinking glasses and the roar of so many boisterous voices did nothing to rival the much louder clang playing out between Wyatt's ears. How could she turn on a dime like that? He wanted to reach out and touch her just to know that she was real, because _that_ \- the sincerity, the reassurance, the wholehearted vote of confidence - was the Lucy Preston he'd fallen for, the one he needed in his orbit even if it was for friendship and nothing else.

That last thought got sidelined real hard when she was jostled by the swelling crowd behind her, propelling her straight into his chest. His arms moved reflexively to keep her against him, and with the crush of Lucy's body pressed tightly to his, friendship could go drown in the nearest ocean.

She peeled herself away from him slowly, a smudge of sheepishness working across her face. "These heels were designed for a woman with a basic aptitude for grace and balance. Obviously I am not that woman."

Wyatt tried to chuckle along with her, but she was carelessly readjusting the side seams of her dress and it was all he could do to keep his gaze aboveboard. _Get your damn eyes up_ , _Logan_. _Up, up, up_.

"Hey, looks like they're moving into the ballroom," she whispered near his ear. "That's our cue."

There had been a plan at some point, a reference to the top tier of the ballroom, a secluded bar that should provide a decent view of the activity below. He'd agreed to her idea before they'd split off to find party attire, but now...now the word _secluded_ felt like a curse.

He felt Lucy eyeing him as they approached the stairs, and before he could muster the courage to turn and acknowledge her, she began nervously unloading without any prompting.

"I know this is...we, uh - we're not on great terms right now, so no pressure, but this would really be so much easier if I could…" Lucy gestured at her feet, the railing, him, and then said nothing else, leaving Wyatt to put the pieces together on his own.

"You need an arm?" he asked reluctantly.

"Please?"

There had been another party once, and he'd required no nudge of a request that night. He'd wanted her arm in his even if there had been no necessity for it, although he suspected those shoes had been just as treacherous for her as the ones she wore now. That point was irrelevant. It had just been right in the moment. He'd wanted to be the guy with Lucy Preston on his arm in 1941 and 2018 and wherever else she would allow it. Despite every valid reason he had to know better now, he didn't have a hard time admitting that he _still_ wanted to be that guy.

So he offered, and she accepted. Every step brought a caress of gauzy fabric against his arm, which meant he was the one cursing his lack of a jacket, not her. He'd cuffed his sleeves in an attempt to bring some semblance of decorum to his otherwise incomplete look, exposing his forearm to every swishing touch that came his way. Just another day of disastrously addictive limbo, right?

He was overreacting. He _knew_ he was overreacting. If nothing else, last week's misstep should have absolved him of his vice-like desire for her, so why was he still as jumpy as a virgin in a whorehouse? What kind of unholy exorcism did he have to sign up for to escape the effect she had on him?

The very second Wyatt could reclaim his arm without coming off as a total ass, he did it. He purposely hung back at the top of the staircase, allowing her to go flitting off ahead of him until he could screw his head on right.

It was a fruitless undertaking. Lucy charmed the bartender into keeping an eye out for any of her 'friends' that were still due to arrive. She brushed shoulders with other guests, flawlessly dipping in and out of conversations about cocktails and the space program, trading recipes for egg salad while somehow managing to drop a subtle line about Rittenhouse - an innocent question, a dangling phrase - with every person they encountered. Wyatt wasn't the target of a single cunning move she made, and yet he was helplessly captive to all of it, every smile, every airy laugh, every toss of her head.

He was especially captive to the dress that moved with her throughout, maddeningly flimsy against the all-too accessible curve of her breasts.

"Wyatt," she hummed lightly, long fingers sliding across the tall pub table they currently occupied to touch the back of his hand.

He glanced up sharply, scanning either side of their table in search of a threatening figure or the next victim of their covert cross-examinations.

Lucy slanted herself farther over the tabletop, tapping his hand again to regain his attention. "Relax, okay? You're starting to scare people off."

"I am not."

"You are," she contested with a thinly arched eyebrow pinning him down. "You've been weird all night."

"Can you please just…"

 _Sit up_ , he wanted to plead. _Please just sit up_.

He didn't have to say it out loud. She followed his line of sight when his gaze plunged too low of its own volition. Her mouth parted, surely to deliver the most incensed rant of her life, but the interference of a lovestruck drunk - one she'd already peppered with questions at the bar - saved him from his condemned fate.

Lucy fended her admirer off brilliantly, never quite losing the veneer of polite decorum even as she sent the poor guy on his way...to get her another drink.

"Really?" Wyatt asked as soon as they were alone again. "Reeling him in just to earn yourself a personal waiter? Very classy."

"Like you're one to talk. Enjoying the view tonight, Wyatt?"

She traced a nail along the opening of her dress for what felt like the millionth time, a gesture he'd long ago written off as nervous fiddling, an inadvertent trap she hadn't meant to set.

He had no such convictions now. Maybe this whole routine had been for his eyes only. If she could smooth talk that intoxicated idiot into retrieving her another gin and tonic with so little effort, who was to say she hadn't been working that same angle with him all night? It was hardly the first time that Wyatt wondered if he'd ever really known Lucy at all, but apparently he'd hit his limit. He was hurtling off the edge and there was no safety net to keep him from splattering into pieces at the bottom of this precipice.

"We need to talk," he bit out lethally. "Alone."

"You've had plenty of opportunities to get me alone. A whole week's worth, actually. Why the sudden interest now? Change of wardrobe, perhaps? Were the oversized sweaters not doing it for you back home?"

Wyatt refused to dignify a word of her scornful pushback. He stood with the awful screech of his chair's legs protesting against the floor, his jaw set. "I'm not kidding. Let's go."

"And what, abandon the mission just to - "

His hand closed around her microscopic wrist, prodding her up to her feet. "There is no mission if I can't think straight."

Panic spasmed across her face for only a moment before she stuffed it down into some deep and unfeeling pocket of her soul. "And where exactly are we going?"

"There's an entire hotel on the other side of those doors, right?" he growled in response. "I'm sure there's a lucky room out there just waiting to witness the worst clusterfuck of a relationship this place has ever seen."

Lucy's answering gulp - almost too muffled to be heard, except his ears were fixated on nothing but her - brought him far more cold-blooded satisfaction than what he should have been comfortable with feeling. That was what scared him the most, actually. He might have nothing left but a cold-blooded instinct for anger and isolation if he didn't break through to her. Wyatt hadn't liked himself much before he met Lucy; it made all the sense in the world that he didn't like the person he was becoming without her - the _real_ her - either.


	11. Ground Rules

_a/n: I'm baaaaaaack. Thank goodness I edited this chapter prior to leaving, because I am 1000% travel brain-fried right now. In the event that you also feel like it's been a thousand years since the last update, this picks up pretty much right where the last one left off, so just a little re-reading should hopefully jump-start your memory!_

 _Special shout out to angellwings for giving this chapter an extra look for me :)_

* * *

The door fell shut with a muted click, but the sound of it was like a blaring alarm to Lucy's senses. They were alone in an empty hotel room of all places, and if the strained muscles of his forearms were anything to go by, Wyatt was pissed. And rightfully so.

Too bad she didn't really regret anything she'd done.

"So have you been intentionally toying with me tonight," he began with causal ambiguity, "or was that just my overactive - and overstimulated - imagination at work?"

She kicked off her heels and invaded what little space existed between them, turning her face up as closely to his as she dared. "Not intentionally. At least it wasn't. Then I caught you gawking for the second or third time and maybe decided to have a little fun at your expense."

There was a telltale flare of his nostrils, but everything else was a veneer of disciplined calm. "You know, most days I think it's infuriating that you insist on pretending to be someone you're not."

"And other days...days like today, I'm guessing?"

His eyes glinted savagely. "I'm too turned on to care."

She raised a brow in challenge. "Sounds like you're finally coming around to my point of view."

He shook his head and tracked a fluid line down her neck with calloused fingertips. "It's no secret that I want to make love to you. But love is still the key word in that sentence, babydoll."

Lucy couldn't withhold her snort of derision, not even when he'd tacked on that stupid term of endearment in a tone that made her a little crazy. "Love is a weapon...nothing but a pissing match for power."

"Bullshit." He took a step back, clearly crestfallen. "You don't actually believe that."

"Wanna bet? When you showed up in Normandy, there was a reason you didn't say, 'Hey Lucy, wanna start time traveling again?' You didn't ask me if I was up for another adventure. You didn't tell me the world needed saving. You played the exact card you needed to play - Rufus. You sat down, you looked me in the eye, and you said three words that were sure to bend me right into breaking - 'Rittenhouse has Rufus.' And not just that Rufus was in danger either, right? Because you _knew_. You knew it would hurt more if I heard you say Rittenhouse right out of the gate."

"Lucy - "

"Don't you see? It's _all_ a manipulation of emotions. Everything is. I can't detach myself from Rufus anymore than I can detach myself from _them_ \- from my family tree of creepy degenerate cult members. And - and _Rufus_..." She dug her toes into the plush hotel carpet and prayed for that worthless wavering note in her voice to disappear. "Tell me how different this would be if you'd killed Flynn at the Hindenburg. Or in 1865. Tell me what it would be like if our team was only formed for a matter of days before the whole thing ended just as randomly as it had begun. Would I be here? Would either of us? No. I'd still be giving tours on the coast of France, or better yet, lecturing at Stanford. Writing books. Maybe winning the battle for tenure by now."

"And you're telling me that any of that would be worth it?" he struck back with a sneer. "You'd rather turn Rufus into nothing but an acquaintance, barely more than a stranger?"

"My point is that he wouldn't be leverage. You couldn't use him to get to me."

She'd wounded him with that one. Wyatt wore his pain all over his face, but it didn't delay his retort for more than a second or two. "Believe it or not, my only game here is saving his life because he's my _friend_ , Lucy. You could have told me to go to hell ten times over at that cafe and I still would have done this without you. I would have hated it - and probably would have failed spectacularly by now - but I would have tried anyway. So that makes me - what? Weak? Stupid?"

A truth so simple, so small and yet so enormous, sprung right out of her. "It makes you vulnerable."

"Ah," he said with a smile tinged by morbid victory. "Vulnerability. The most deadly of all sins, huh?"

His smugness pressed against a raw nerve, hot and volatile. "How can you disagree? You know it better than anyone, Wyatt. That's what Rittenhouse did to you. They exploited you with Jessica. They exploited _Jessica_ with her brother, didn't they? It's how they work. They see human nature...human _emotion_ as nothing more than an opportunity for a power grab. They find the soft spot - the vulnerability - and they get as much mileage out of it as they can. They made a victim of you, of her, of her whole family."

"So is that how you see yourself these days? As a victim?"

Her answer was soft, some of the fight ebbing away into desolation. "It's how I see all of us."

Wyatt nodded as he reached for his tie, loosening the knot with slow, methodical movements. "So from one victim to another, let's say you're right for just a minute - vulnerability is nothing but a weapon in the hands of others. Let's also say that I've decided to relinquish all control to you for tonight. No power grabs. No emotional pleas, no exploitation. I do whatever you want, however you want, for as long as you want. No strings attached."

"You don't mean…"

His eyes trickled over the low neckline of her dress - the impetus, his original point of descent - and his shoulders rose with a deep breath. "I mean whatever you want me to mean. You have the power. You're in charge."

"That's not - you don't - "

"I want whatever you want."

"I know there's more to it than that." Lucy shook her head forcefully, if only to distract him from her shaking hands. "You don't agree with anything I just said. You...you're just trying to prove me wrong."

"Can you be proven wrong?" He let his tie hang loose, dangling in invitation around his neck as he moved to open the top button of his shirt. "I was under the impression that there was nothing I could say or do to change your mind."

"I don't see how this helps your cause at all. You're going to let me use you? Just like that, after a week of refusing anything even remotely close to - to - "

"To sex? To a meaningless, carnal, free for all? It's not a big deal, right?" Wyatt sat on the edge of the mattress and began to undo his shoelaces in no great hurry. "Just a firing of endorphins, a chemical release or something like that, simple biology. So let's do it. Let's get each other off for the sake of getting off. What's wrong with burning through our frustrations while also burning off a few calories?"

"Now you're just mocking me."

His shoes fell to the carpet with two dull thuds. "Should I take my clothes off or do you want the honor?"

"Quit it, Wyatt."

"This is your free pass, Lucy. I'm not kidding."

She crossed her arms firmly over her chest to brace against her racing heartbeat. "I don't believe you."

"Try me. Tell me what you want and I'll do it."

The staredown between them felt as loaded with strings - the exact sort of strings he'd promised weren't attached - as anything she'd ever experienced. It was a shameless trap, plain and simple. The web around them was so thick, so intricately woven, guaranteeing that she'd never snip through it all. If she backed away, turned him down flat, then he'd get to say she was silently conceding his point - there was no such thing as sex without meaning. If she accepted the offer, Wyatt was confident he'd gain the upperhand and convince her that she wanted more.

Damn him for this. Damn them both.

"You leave when we're done," she announced suddenly. "I don't care where you sleep tonight, but it won't be in that bed."

His face was an impenetrable mask of aloofness. "Fine. What else?"

"No big confessions. No sweet nothings. The less you talk, the better."

"Easy enough," he returned with a shrug.

"We're not discussing this later."

"Sure," he agreed easily, shrugging again. "Unless you want to, of course."

Lucy scoffed. "I won't."

"Whatever you say, ma'am."

She almost told him to cut that out too, but she clenched her jaw shut before the words could escape her. Taking 'ma'am' off the table was as good as admitting another weak spot, and he already knew too many of them. Although he most likely already knew that one, too.

Lucy yielded to the undeniable pull of gravity in another moment, crossing the room at a painstaking pace until he was within reach. She took his face in her hands, the five o'clock shadow she'd always adored - a stupid confession she'd made on their last night together - cordially welcoming her touch. "I don't get it."

His eyebrows jumped higher as he gazed up at her. "Get what?"

"You staring down my dress all night like a sex-starved teenager. You do realize there's really not much to see, right? I'd chalk it up to poor memory or too many nights jacking off alone, but we just did this a week ago, so neither of those excuses really makes sense."

He grinned up at her, as unabashed as only Wyatt Logan could be. "Oh please. This self-deprecating routine of yours really wears thin after awhile."

"I guess I just assumed you couldn't be much of a boob guy, considering…"

"I'm a Lucy Preston guy. And maybe a bit of a leg guy, but mostly just a Lucy Preston guy. Plus a week is a _very_ long time when I spend every frickin' day so damn close to you that it actually hurts. It physically hurts." His hand twitched toward her before he cut himself off, making a fist and pressing it back down into the comforter. "So hell yes, I want to look down your dress. Up your dress. See you in no dress at all. If it were up to me, that dress would already be off of you, but I'm not in charge, am I?"

With her hands still framing his face, she tugged him up until he got the message and rose to his feet. "I'm not interested in having sex with a robot, okay? You know the ground rules. I'll keep you informed of any additions or changes, but other than that…"

"Yes?" he asked, his lips ticking up to one side.

She raised her hands above her head and watched his eyes darken with understanding. "You have my permission to take it off and do what you wish."

Wyatt stepped further into her, his shirtfront teasing over the light chiffon that covered her breasts. His head tilted lower so that his height closed in on her, engulfed her, dwarfed her. "Be careful what you ask for..."

"I'm not interested in gentle. Not tonight."

He swallowed heavily. "Is that a suggestion, or another ground rule?"

"Ground rule. And you have to listen to those."

"Your wish, my command."

He confiscated the dress in both fists and ripped it up and off of her faster than she could blink. Her body was next, clasped indelicately between his hands and hoisted upward until she found herself flat on her back, breathless. "Holy shit, Wyatt."

His body pinned her to the bed, mouth hot on her neck. "Too much?"

"N - No."

He nipped a strip of her skin between his teeth, exchanged teeth for tongue, then tongue for lips. "You need to make sure that dress comes home with you, Luce. You're a damn vision in red."

She'd told him to not talk much, but the more he talked, the more she felt a trembling pressure build inside of her, and _God_ did she ever want to give into anything that had her this far gone this fast.

"Why," she asked on a faint breath, "so I can parade around in it as often as it takes to get what I want from you?"

He snapped his hips against hers and skimmed his hands down her sides. "I heard Lucy Preston say the words _jacking off_ tonight. I'm already doomed to be in a constant state of hot and bothered for weeks to come, so why not add random appearances of you in that dress just to push me over the edge of sanity?"

Any response she'd hoped to rally back with was stifled by a high-flying moan. His fingers had slipped past her underwear to feel his way over her, circle her, dip into her. Wyatt moved relentlessly, purposefully, with well-cultivated command, like a student who'd dutifully studied all semester for the most important final exam of his life.

"And if I'm going insane," he said with that smirk-laden voice that she could feel pounding through her veins, "you better believe I'll be taking you there with me."

His thumb joined in on the action to emphasize his point, furiously inciting a friction that rattled her to the bone. The sensation of his clothing gliding over her bare skin only added to the frenzy. It left her dizzy, shivering, a certified mess. Wyatt chuckled against her neck before dipping lower, mouth trailing downward until he could leave several kisses along the roadmap of her lace-trimmed bra. "The jump where Lincoln was shot."

Lucy blinked, wriggled away in search of some shred of clarity, only to be obstructed with the rough barrier of a hand to her hip that locked her into place. "What?"

"The first time I wanted to do _this_." He slid his tongue over her skin, following the curving contour of her breast in one long stroke. "That gown you bought for the play...it brought certain things to my attention. Things I may have thought of when I was biting the underwire out of your bra the day before, but adamantly refused to actually fantasize about at the time."

"I'm pretty sure you - " her voice wavered as he licked again in time to a jerk of two fingers curling inside of her, " - you kinda hated me then."

His thumb picked up speed and her vision dimmed at the corners. "A little bit. But sometimes actual tension bleeds over quite nicely into sexual tension, dontcha think?"

Wyatt punctuated that question with a gasp-inducing third finger, and after only a few more pulsing thrusts, she couldn't hold out any longer. Lucy pitched up against his hand and lost herself moments later, a rush of heat overtaking her limbs, her brain, her whole body.

She didn't even feel him removing her bra. Her underwear was gone too. It was like she'd floated away entirely and awoke with a start to find herself completely naked, exhaling raggedly as his hands scattered over her ribcage and laid claim to both breasts.

"Lincoln may have been the first time I got a little... _distracted_ , but it wasn't the last. I promise I'm not a creepy fetish guy, but this job has taught me to appreciate the effect of a good corset."

She was barely drifting down to earth, her voice thready as she tried to center her thoughts. "Tell that to all the ugly indents on my skin when I take one of those monsters off after a long jump."

Wyatt's brow furrowed in concern, and her heart stuttered in her chest as his soft blue eyes came up to meet hers. Oh...oh, dammit, he was not supposed to be looking at her like that.

"I take it back then," he whispered, his touch easing automatically, becoming far less possessive. His fingers caressed her with a dangerously light concentration, calming, hypnotic. "You're just as beautiful without - "

"Stop." She flung that word out without knowing how to explain herself, but stop he did. Stopped talking, stopped touching her, stopped looking at her. He pushed himself up wordlessly, obedient to her every whim, just as promised. Lucy followed after him, hooking her fingers against his partially opened dress shirt and holding fast. She saw the change in his eyes. Felt the love he so blatantly carried for her fade away into pragmatic acceptance.

"Tell me what you want, Lucy."

She didn't speak. Her fingers found his belt instead. Wyatt lounged back on his elbows and watched her remove it, face contorting as she scraped her knuckles down his hardened length through the material of his pants.

"We're not done yet," she said in a voice that was surely too husky to be her own.

A bolt of emotion lit his features before he could snuff it out from view. She froze, recognizing it for exactly what it was - _hope_. He'd heard a different sort of promise in her choice of words, and not for the first time, she hated herself for this tug of war she'd created between them. He shouldn't have hope. She shouldn't have allowed him to foster an ounce of it.

"Are you planning to do something with that hand other than torture me?" he huffed impatiently from between his teeth.

"Right," she said as she flushed her way right out of that guilty reverie, "sorry."

"No apology necessary. The torture is all yours to inflict. I was just trying to prepare myself to slowly die here of blue balls if that was the name of the game."

Wyatt may have meant that with all sincerity, but there was no mistaking the relief that flooded his face when she snapped back into motion and went to work on his fly. He stayed as still as he could while she freed him of his pants, his boxers, what remained of his tie, and the rest of his shirt buttons. It was then that he decided to aid in the effort, but she stopped him before he could worm his arms out of his sleeves, her hands gripping his open collar on impulse.

"Like this...I want you like this."

He glanced warily down at himself, taking stock of the white shirt that billowed open and his leather shoulder holster. "You can't be serious."

Lucy crawled over him, positioning herself too high to give him the attention he most wanted, prolonging the inevitable for just another moment longer. "You like the corsets, I like the holster. And the rolled sleeves. They're staying too."

The glimmering amusement that filled his eyes was damn near blinding. "So what you're saying is that _you're_ the creepy fetish person here?"

"Grow up, Wyatt. It's not creepy to have certain...appreciations."

His head fell back with a small grin, eyes shuttering closed. "Just when I think I couldn't be more in - nope, can't say that. Almost broke a ground rule. My bad."

It wasn't hard to figure out where he'd been going with that, and to spare him - and herself, if she was being honest - from dwelling any further on what remained unspoken between them, Lucy angled back and regained control in the only way that mattered. Wyatt's whole body seemed to groan along with the noise that was flung from his throat as she guided him into her. His fingers dug into her thighs but he applied no force, made no appeal for movement, the veins in his neck tightening as he breathed in and out with great care. She leaned over him and absorbed the ripple of pleasure that was created between them, suffered a strangled catch of her own breath, then sank her lips against his and stole away his second labored groan.

It was their first real kiss of the night, and now she knew why Wyatt had refrained from initiating one of his own. His mouth beneath hers set off a chain reaction of bustling, entangling affection. She couldn't kiss him and not - not…

Not remember how much of her heart she'd lost to him.

Who the hell did she think she was kidding with this? Certainly not Wyatt. Not even herself.

Lucy tore free from the kiss abruptly. She bolted her hands to his shoulders, fixed her eyes on the headboard above him, and rocked quickly with a rhythm that wasn't truly their own. They'd only done this a handful of times, surely not enough to establish any sort of pattern or precedent, but _rushed_ was not a thing they did. Not until tonight. Not until she needed to race him off the edge before she got stupid enough to break her own damn ground rule about sweeping confessions.

His fingers flexed further into her skin. She felt him silently battling with the compulsion to slow her down, to make her take her time, but Wyatt wasn't one to go back on his word. He wasn't going to interfere. She was free to set the pace, and her pace of choice was speeding down a highway with the pedal flat on the floor, flying like a bat out of proverbial hell. She made it her mission to hastily fan the flames that consumed them with all the delicacy of a mercy killing.

He made some sort of unearthly noise as she shifted a little to one side and drove him deeper still, and then he was the one who clawed her down for a kiss. Ravenous, hard, on the borderline of cruel, a kiss that splintered through her and had her pelvis rocking viciously against his.

It wasn't long before Wyatt went off like dynamite inside of her. She fell from the ledge just a second later with an unbridled series of tremors, his name wrenching from her lips as she tumbled through her orgasm. Lucy slumped to his chest and stayed there, nails carving into his shoulders as they unraveled in unison.

Sweat-slicked silence gradually wrapped its way around their joined bodies. Lucy turned her face to the side and pressed a cheek to Wyatt's thundering heart, counting each terse beat of life - of stunning vitality - in lackadaisical contentment. Having him there, feeling him inside her, never failed to seem right even when everything else about them was wrong.

But he was rolling her limp frame off of him all too soon, ripping away the comfortable haze of euphoria. He sat up and turned his back without a word, slipping his boxers into place with hands that still trembled slightly.

"Wyatt - "

"Just following orders, ma'am."

The detachment in his voice - the detachment in that _ma'am_ \- ran like ice water down her spine. Lucy watched him dress in a trance of rueful cowardice, too stubborn to ask him to stay, too masochistic to look away as he prepared to leave. This wasn't hell. It was worse, less humane, a malicious fate she'd outlined for herself; it was purgatory.

Wyatt didn't glance back this time. He crumpled his tie in his hands, the last article of clothing to be retrieved from the floor, and then he was gone. No half-smiles. No parting words. Just gone.


	12. Symptoms

_a/n: I wanted to get this cranked out much sooner, but alas, chapter 12 is coming to ya live now :)_

 _Side note #1: I meant to change the rating of this story to M after the last chapter because...reasons. But I totally forgot, and I like to give fair warning on that so you know FFnet is about to filter to this story to the shame page (aka off the beat path of updated stories). Sooo if you look for updates via the main Timeless page, this story will no longer show up there once I switch it to M! Make sure you change the filters to see future updates._

 _Side note #2: I caught myself falling back on post-divergent canon when I went back to edit this chapter (oops), so for the purpose of not adding a bunch of extra exposition late in the game, let's all say that Carol met a similar fate in this version of the story as she did in 2x10. Cool? Cool. You guys are the best ;)_

 _Final side note: I think several readers are in for a much-anticipated treat in this chapter (hint - Jiya is tired & tired!Jiya isn't holding her tongue)_

* * *

She hadn't meant to fall asleep. Hell, she hadn't meant to check out on an _entire mission_ , for that matter. One minute spent in pitiful self-loathing had dragged her right under the current, though. Lucy had curled up against the weight of too many awful decisions, and in that little shell of despair, she had no defense against the weight of a gritty, restless unconsciousness.

It was Jiya who called up to her room early the next morning, prying Lucy's eyelids apart and unleashing another rabid torrent of regret. It was also Jiya who met her in the hotel's arching lobby with a disappointed look, unenthusiastically explaining that Rittenhouse had jumped back to the present. She lead the way back to the Mothership in quick staccato steps as Lucy struggled to keep up in a pair of fickle platform heels and the restrictive cut of her crumpled cocktail dress...a dress that Wyatt had verbally - and very _nonverbally_ \- expressed an unreasonable amount of appreciation for last night.

She wanted to ask about him with every breath she took, but stubborn pride kept her mouth bolted shut. Their non-relationship was already a dicey subject with Jiya, and if she had any idea how irresponsible they'd been, fleeing the party long before it was over, charging out of the ballroom arm in arm, the heat of rising anger shimmering between them, the heat of something far more dangerous shimmering even more distinctly…

And then the heat of _him_ \- filling her whole, launching her toward delirium, robbing her of all other senses until she was so disoriented that she couldn't even be bothered to return to the job at hand.

Lucy bit against the inside of her lip, aggravated with herself for spending even a moment revisiting something that never should have happened in the first place.

"He's already at the Mothership," Jiya announced suddenly - unprovoked, and yet sounding very, very provoked. "And I don't know how the hell you keep doing this to him, since we're on the subject."

"We _weren't_ on the subject."

"He looked like shit when I tracked him down this morning. I don't think he slept at all."

Guilt prickled over Lucy's arms, but she was determined to ignore it. "There were plenty of rooms for him to choose from here. I didn't keep him from - "

"I don't care. Really, I don't. It's your business and it's his business, and as much as I think you both need to pull your heads of your asses - for very different reasons, mind you - I definitely don't consider it _my_ business." Jiya's pace increased with each word, leaving Lucy to stagger like a newborn giraffe in her attempt keep up, an easy mark for disaster in heels too high and flagstone spaced too far apart. She was just on the brink of skittering out of control when Jiya came to a warningless standstill, mercifully clutching Lucy's arm in her hand to keep her upright.

None of that same mercy was reflected in her dark eyes.

"But if your side-project of screwing with his head gets in the way of our mission, _that_ is my business," she said on the tailwind of a long, jagged breath. "And I won't forgive you, Lucy. Not for that, not if it means Rufus doesn't come home."

"I'm not…" she swallowed hard, far more shaken by that incrimination than she cared to admit. "I never meant for it to be like this. I don't want to hurt him, and I - I don't want to jeopardize Rufus any more than you do."

Jiya released her arm, disappointment coloring every inch of her face. "I want to believe you, but I...I saw what Jessica did to him. I watched Wyatt twist himself into knots over her, witnessed the way he tortured himself for months over the mistakes he made while she still had him caught up in her weird voodoo mind control routine."

Lucy knew exactly what was coming after that ominous prelude, but her sense of foreboding did nothing to soften the blow.

"You saw it too. She hurt you just as badly as she hurt him, didn't she? Because it's one and the same. She tore you both apart. But yet here you are, supposedly one of the good guys, one of Wyatt's teammates, right…? And you're no better than her, not really. You're just as content to shred him to pieces as she was."

She hadn't asked for Wyatt to come looking for her in France. She hadn't pursued any part of this, hadn't wanted to reclaim any of it - not time travel, not the crushing responsibility that came with it, and certainly not this messy snare of a relationship she'd purposefully left behind. She knew it would be easier to walk away, to cut out the festering wound at the source, than to open herself up to another brutal round of emotional roulette. None of this had been her plan. Wyatt had tracked her across an ocean, not the other way around.

But with Jiya shaking her head and marching away alone, it was next to impossible for Lucy to plead her innocence to a retreating back. Hell, she couldn't even plead innocence to herself.

Jiya stopped up short at the end of the walkway, pivoting just slightly to jam the knife of indictment a little further. "Did you know he had me trace you when you first left? He was so scared that your note was a fake, that the whole thing was an elaborate Rittenhouse scheme to get to you without us knowing it. He wouldn't rest until I had security footage from the airport, and then there you were. Alone. Free. Not a damn care in the world. I will never forget the look on Wyatt's face when he realized it was all true - you really chose to run off like a criminal in the middle of the night, just like the note said. There was no secret plot or heinous kidnapping to explain it away."

"I…I didn't - "

"You say you don't want to cause him more pain, but let me tell you, you've sure done a bang-up job of accomplishing the exact opposite."

Tears stung in Lucy's eyes as she was left to absorb that revelation on her own. Wyatt, so sure that foul play had been involved even though she'd written that message for no reason but to keep him from coming to that exact conclusion… Wyatt who believed she was a far better person than she really was, to the point where he couldn't stop grappling with the alternative until hard proof came to slap him across the face.

She slipped the blister-inducing heels from her feet and began the lonesome pilgrimage back to the Mothership, surely claiming a gold medal for the ultimate walk of shame if there'd ever been such a thing. Her hair was one giant tumbleweed of knotted chaos and last night's crinkled-up dress had certainly seen better days, but no outward sign of humiliation could hold a candle to what she felt on the inside.

She was hurting him. She was hurting him again and again and again. Worst of all, he was letting her do it despite how it affected him. Wyatt willingly accepted the role of her damn punching bag even though he'd done nothing to earn it.

Her head hung low as the last few feet between her and the time machine evaporated. Wyatt was there, ready to offer a hand up as soon as she reached him. Where their palms connected, there were palpable shockwaves.

Where their eyes connected, there was nothing.

He dropped his hand, his gaze, his everything. It was all gone as quickly as it had arrived. Lucy thought she observed a telling tick of his jaw as she took her seat and fidgeted with the hem of her dress, but it dwindled away before she could be sure.

Jiya didn't offer the cursory check as she began flipping switches and entering coordinates. They were taking off regardless of who was or was not ready. The same could be said for their landing. Jiya was up and out of the pilot's seat while the controls were still humming, Wyatt followed right on her heels, and then there was Lucy, head still spinning, harness barely even buckled before she found herself unbuckling it again.

Not a word had been spoken between the three of them. Not as they'd climbed aboard in Houston. Not in the Mothership. Not now, wherever the hell they'd just landed. Jiya slammed a door shut before Lucy could get both feet on solid ground. Wyatt was already disappearing into what she remembered to be a bathroom from the last time they were at this safehouse. She trudged forward in the wake of their silence, her chin squared ahead of her, but the tremor in her hands wouldn't go away.

She refused to hide from either of them. She'd given Wyatt every out last night, so was it really her fault that he hadn't taken a damn one of them? And she owed nothing to Jiya, not where her relationship with Wyatt was concerned. So she was going to change out of the stupid dress - maybe find a way to incinerate the damn thing beyond recognition while she was at it - and then she was digging through every last kitchen cabinet until she had what she needed to make herself a cup of goddamn tea. Out in the open. Unashamed.

Which is exactly where Wyatt found her several minutes later, fresh from a shower and smelling like a hazy cloud of spice-scented temptation. One look at him from where she stood against the countertop and Lucy was already regretting this out-in-the-open rebellion of hers. Hiding would have been a much, much better plan.

"Good, you found the kettle." His smile was noticeably threadbare, but the gesture wasn't lost on her. "There's supposed to be one of them in each place, but Jiya finished stocking this location without me, so - "

"You're...talking to me?"

Oh God, really? She had to let that petty junior high level question bubble out of her at the first sign of acknowledgement from him?

Wyatt ambled another step or two forward, his forehead creasing with confusion. "Yeah, why wouldn't I be?"

"Umm, last night was...we - "

"Last night we had consensual sex and parted ways on agreeable terms." He tipped his head, a perfect portrait of nonchalance. "No harm, no foul. It's all good."

Her frustration with him - or really with herself - cracked into a thousand spidery fractures. "Why are you doing this? Why are you letting me - why are you pretending to be okay with this when I know you're not?"

"Lucy…" his sigh blew away the impassive front, emotions now passing like sped-up seasons across his face. "You already know my answer."

"Because this isn't me, right? Because you're so sure that I - that I'll cave, that you can wear me down into being the person you want me to be?"

"I don't want you to be anyone but yourself," Wyatt rallied back with a mechanical shake of his head.

She opened her arms in quaking exasperation. "This is exactly who I am."

"Then let me rephrase it," he conceded, lavishing her with a devastating half-smile that did nothing to erase the pain in his eyes. "I did this to you. I ruined what we had, I broke your trust, I - I ruined _you_ , apparently. You couldn't even bear to be on the same damn continent as me anymore, so this is me doing whatever it takes to fix it. Do I think that sex will magically make it better? Hell no. But I'm only human, Luce, and...and you last night? You got under my skin."

The whirlwind of his eyes, the sinking riptide in his too-low voice, it was all clashing together somewhere in her chest, burying her under feelings she had no business feeling.

Wyatt stepped closer, watchful, poised as if for attack. "Let me amend that last part. You're _always_ under my skin, like one of those viruses that sometimes go dormant but can't actually be cured. The type that never really leaves your body, flaring up at the most inconvenient times..."

Her face was too frozen to muster much a smile, but she did her damnedest anyway. "You're comparing me to a bad strain of malaria?"

He chuckled a little darkly. "Fever, chills, exhaustion...the symptoms don't lie."

That admission had Lucy wanting him all over again, to claim his explosive pleasure, to let his desire fuel her own. It made her half-sick to know that she could want and want and want without ever satisfying the craving.

Another step forward and he was cradling her jaw in his fingertips, his thumb glancing softly across her cheek. "Why are so intent on holding it all in, Lucy? I see it constantly, the battle that's going on inside of your head. You have to be so tired of fighting against yourself every damn day."

She drew down the curtain of her eyelids, simultaneously wanting to bat his hand away just as much as she wanted to throw herself straight into him. "You didn't send me to another continent. It wasn't you I ran from, not - not exactly."

"Not _exactly_?" If her sudden backtracking bothered him, it wasn't reflected in his warm tone. "If not me, then...what? Who?"

"The way it felt to be with you that night. To let go of everything that had gotten in the way and just...just feel again. To rip open the scab. I...I wasn't ready. Not when I still hadn't really dealt with losing my mom, and...and especially when nothing we'd done to - to reset the timeline to save Amy had worked." Hot tears ransacked her voice. She blinked down at the floor, banishing the useless sadness until she trusted herself to speak again. "I thought I was ready to love you again, but I wasn't. I wasn't ready to feel anything."

Wyatt smudged her tears away, silent with a composure that was suffocating. The lull between them pressed against her ears, rushed over her skin. She could hear every word he wasn't saying.

"It's different," she went on brokenly, a little out of breath despite the stillness of her limbs. "It's not _you_ , Wyatt. It's not something you did. I know that sounds like a load of crap from someone who dropped off the face of the earth and left no forwarding address, but I swear to God, I wasn't mad or - or… I wasn't blaming you. I - "

His thumbs moved faster, both of them in unison, windshield wipers on the glass screen of a turbulent breakdown. "It's okay, Lucy. I get it. I still played my part, though. I'm the one who let all of those things get in the way to begin with."

Her gaze rose a little higher, converging on a welcoming patch of open skin where the collar of his flannel shirt was undone. "Wildly claustrophobic. You said that once, about me when...when we were - "

"In the smuggler's hold of Wendell Scott's car. I remember."

Lucy nodded, a rasping sniffle tumbling out in tandem. "That's the only way I can describe it. Trying to lie there next to you and somehow trust that it would turn out differently than what we went through after Hollywood...? It was like drowning all over again."

"You felt claustrophobic?" His voice was a lot less neutral that time. More like afflicted, warped with the burden of abrupt understanding.

"Panicked, gasping like the walls were closing in, an overriding voice in my head telling me I had to - to just get out, or I wouldn't survive?" She shrank into herself, reliving a subdued encore performance of the mania that had gripped her in the shadows of his barren-walled apartment. "Yeah. The symptoms don't lie."

There was nothing funny about echoing those words back to him. She was a virus beneath his skin, he was a hair-trigger to her overactive nervous system, and neither one of them seemed to have any hope of healing the chronic ache in their hearts; what a bleak and battered pair they made.

Wyatt's hands slipped off of her face and trailed down her neck, stopping to collect the tension from her shoulders. His words slung low, melting over her quietly. "It just happened, didn't it? Us, that night. After so much time spent walking on eggshells with each other, we...we went straight to _that_ without any lead-in. Tell me I'm remembering it right, because to be honest, the whole thing is one giant blur to me."

"That's because it _was_ a blur." Lucy mopped up the last of her tears and turned her face up to his, nearly struck mute at the red lines marring his crystal gaze. "I had nowhere to go, no life left to get back to, no family to take me in...I was a mess that whole week, trying to sort things out with Stanford and look at apartments and - and…"

He picked up where she trailed off, squeezing her shoulders lightly. "And I had a cobwebbed tin-can of a place that Uncle Sam had never stopped paying the rent on, so I offered you a break from the hotel room shuffle."

She couldn't help but grin tearfully at her own foolishness. Him, her, one bed. No mission, no Lifeboat, no excuses. "We both should have known better."

"Knowing better is usually a myth in my world, ma'am."

Lucy snorted her agreement. "Still...running out of excuses not to sleep together isn't a reason to sleep together."

"It didn't seem like such a bad idea at the time. Plus I think there may have been a 12 year single malt that did the last of the persuading," he answered with a shrug.

"You think we wouldn't have slipped up without it?" she proposed in a floundering scrape of a question, feeling the flush of a memory - watching attentively from across the tiny kitchen table as Wyatt's tongue darted out to soak up a dot of Scotch on his lip - burning through her.

"That's the difference between us, Lucy. I don't count it as a slip up. The only thing I regret is believing you when you said everything was okay and I should go back to sleep."

He...he _remembered_ that? She'd always assumed he hadn't really been awake at all. It did nothing to change the end result, leaving was still leaving, but she knew it was somehow worse. She'd lied to him and he knew it. He'd known it all along.

"Wyatt, I'm - "

"Forget it." His eyes dropped away as his hands trailed down her arms, falling loosely at his sides once he ran out of runway. "There's no timetable for me, not when it comes to you. No deadlines, no cop-outs. Drunk, tipsy, stone-cold sober. Fourteen months, fourteen _years_ \- doesn't make a damn difference. We're always going to wind up in bed next to each other. Breathless. Spent. Ready for another round as soon as our bodies allow it."

Lucy rocked back on her heels, castoff and adrift at the loss of his touch. "For the one who claims to still believe that love holds any meaning after everything we've been through, you sure made it sound like there's nothing but empty attraction between us."

"And for the one person I've ever known who really, _truly_ believed in fate, you sure do a hell of a job dismissing the argument of inevitability."

She folded back against the cabinets and gripped edges of countertop in both fists, too dizzy from this endless merry-go-round to keep her head on straight for another moment. It was Jiya's anger in Houston that was surprisingly emblazoned against her closed eyelids, not Wyatt's sympathetic resignation. "I don't want to hurt you."

"What?" There was the barest nudge of his fingertips along her tightly-wound knuckles. "You don't - listen Lucy, you have spewed a lot of nonsensical bullshit in the last few weeks, but that one really takes top prize."

She glanced up at him, finding neither resignation nor sympathy in his face, but faultless certainty. There was enough unqualified conviction in his eyes to make her grateful for her death grip on the counter behind her.

"If you've gotten anything right, it's that we really are victims," he said without blinking, maybe even without breathing. "And as your fellow victim, let me make something clear, alright? I _am_ hurt, but you haven't done the hurting. You can take me or leave me, throw me away over and over again, but I won't hold ever hold it against you, Luce. If we'd ever had a chance to do any of this the right way - the _normal_ way - then you wouldn't be in this spot. You wouldn't be comparing intimacy to the trauma of a near-death experience. You wouldn't have to choose between love and reason, because you'd know they were the same thing when it comes to us."

"If...if we'd done this the normal way, you never would have chosen me at all."

"That," he said with an unexpected whisper of a kiss to her temple, "is yet another contestant for most nonsensical line of bullshit I've ever heard come out of that pretty mouth."

"Sometimes I think that...that it was never really was you and I. It was the pressure cooker of a situation - the elaborate costumes, the ridiculous cover stories, the constant adrenaline…" She dropped her eyes to his shoulder, barely able to pry the last thought out of her depleted reserve of honesty. "It was two people who had nowhere else to turn, so they turned to each other."

Wyatt's mouth covered hers, taking quiet possession of her doubts, parading right past the hitch in her heart with each distressingly soft kiss. "You and I," he murmured against her lips, "have never been about anything..." there was another kiss, this one firmer than the last, "but you and I. Never, Lucy. It kills me that you could ever question that."

This was a world away from what they'd shared last night. This was nothing _but_ vulnerability. It was a monsoon of slippery emotions, the power play of all power plays, thousands of indiscernible strings binding her closer and closer to him.

She lowered her face, bumping her forehead against his, furiously locking down as many errant impulses as she could in the time it took to fill her lungs again. "I can't do this with you, Wyatt. I - I can't."

"I thought nothing could hurt more than knowing you'd walked away," he returned shakily, his head still tipped affectionately to hers. "Turns out I was wrong. It's so much worse to stand by helplessly as you deny what you want over and over again, bleeding yourself dry right in front of my eyes."

Lucy swallowed back a legion of scorched tears. She knew it as well as he did. It was impossible to pretend that every road didn't carry her right back into his arms even while she did her damnedest to scramble backwards, to throw the whole thing in reverse at every opportunity. His name was written in permanent ink somewhere deeply hidden inside of her, unerasable, an everlasting stamp that branded her as his. She did want him, even when she fought like hell to deny it. If only the act of wanting didn't send pangs of terror straight through her, closing off airways, immobilizing her whole body with the flip of a single switch.

The reply she couldn't form became unnecessary with the screaming siren of another Mothership alert.

It had barely been an hour, and they were already going back out.

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 _Fandom Heaven holds a special place for those who review fanfic :)_


	13. Land Rush

_a/n : my muse took a brief hike this week, but I think I have it under control again :) Without further ado, chapter 13!_

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So close. So. Goddamn. Close.

Wyatt couldn't stop seeing cinnamon eyes that swam with tears, couldn't quit revisiting the sensation of her lips so warm and pliant against his. His mind rifled through each word she'd spoken, the delicate confession of so many pent-up emotions, insecurities that had existed long before their worst setbacks - the fallout of Jessica's appearance, their failure to recover Amy before Homeland shut the whole project down - finally coming to light. _Progress_. Actual, real progress. It was the most he'd ever gotten out of her, not just since his trip across the Atlantic to find her, but even before that...before they'd sidelined Emma, before Jess got between them. It was the skewed truth of a Lucy who had never seen herself in the right light, the Lucy who'd once clumsily suggested he'd always been too cool for her, the same woman who thought he'd been strutting at the top of the social chain while she was relegated to nothing but debate tournaments and quiz bowls. It was a Lucy he _knew_.

Even her protests, the claim of _I can't do this_ right before they were driven apart, had sounded weaker than ever before. Painful authenticity had been shattering through to the surface, the kind of rip-the-skin-off-your bones truth he'd been searching for from the moment he first spotted her from across the street in Normandy.

Until the shutters came down again with the first blare of that fucking alarm. Emma would be wise to stay far, far away from him on this one if she had any interest in keeping her head attached to her shoulders. Her timing had always been shit, but Wyatt was out for absolute blood this time. Another minute, maybe two, and…

And maybe Lucy would have snapped out of it and marched away just as resolutely as the last thousand times she'd marched away from him in the space of a few weeks.

He shifted fitfully against the post behind him and glanced down to check his watch before remembering it was stashed away in the Mothership where it belonged, then felt the prickle of a frickin' splinter lodge itself against his ass as he straightened up again. God, this jump was destined to be a verifiable disaster, wasn't it?

Lucy and Jiya finally emerged from around the corner just as Wyatt was huffing out another impatient sigh. His first thought was that Lucy had made an impressive effort to pull herself together despite the dewy aftermath of their previous conversation that still lined her eyes. Upon second review, though, Jiya was the one who looked far less composed.

Wyatt came to attention immediately at the red flag of her panicked expression. "What's - "

Jiya shook her head rapidly, fingers flicking silently across her throat to cut him off. She waited until Lucy was busy reworking a few mismatched buttons on the front of her dress, then gave another wide-eyed signal, this time at Lucy's back. Her mouth moved without a sound, lips moving slowly, deliberately. _This is the one_.

He frowned and glanced between the two women, not comprehending -

But then Jiya struck out to dig her nails into his arm, jerked her head at Lucy again, adding two more syllables to the wordless message. _Her dress_.

When he looked this time, Wyatt saw what Jiya saw. Blue and white checked with tiny embroidered flowers, long sleeves, a sweeping tiered skirt that floated in a graceful arc around her.

 _Shit_. It was a dress Jiya had seen once before, a dress she described in thorough detail more than a week before Wyatt approached Lucy in France.

A frantic rush of blood pumped through his body as he nodded his understanding. They were ready for this. Or more accurately, _Jiya_ was ready for this. Wyatt had been hoping it was one massive misinterpretation, a vision gone haywire, the fluke of all flukes. If she was right, no precaution they'd taken seemed like enough to temper the reality of what was coming down the line. All other distractions - the fragility of what he'd just discussed with Lucy, his irritation at being interrupted by Rittenhouse, that damn piece of wood snagged in the seat of pants - fell away immediately. Far too much hung in the balance. He couldn't afford to lose his head now.

Jiya sidled up closer, whispering discreetly while pressing the microscopic pin into his palm. "You do it."

He wanted to object, but there wasn't a chance. Lucy turned toward them, an expectant look lifting her brows. "Are we ready?"

"Yeah, just - " he stepped forward, gesturing nervously at her collar, "your, um...let me straighten - "

"Oh, I can - "

"I've got it," he insisted, pushing her hand away as she reached up to adjust it herself, intercepting the movement before she could find that there was nothing there to adjust at all. With the minuscule tracking device tucked up into her collar, Wyatt brushed his hand across her shoulder, satisfied that she was none the wiser. "There you go. All better."

Lucy wasn't overly convinced. She smoothed both hands over her bodice, shifting the material from side to side without looking satisfied with the correction. "The fit of this dress is all wrong. It was slim pickings back there."

She seemed to be a millisecond away from fussing with her collar again, so Wyatt acted on a quick impulse, wrapping his hand around hers and giving it a long squeeze. "No, you - you look beautiful, Lucy."

"Beautiful? In this?" Her surprise gave way to a hint of crimson bashfulness at her neck. With eyes darting sideways, she lowered her voice and tipped her head nearer to his. "We are in a corset era, you know."

Wyatt snorted a chuckle and matched her tone. "Is that right? Interesting bit of trivia, although I'm not sure why you thought it was worth mentioning..."

Lucy nudged him with an elbow, doing her best imitation of an annoyed glare, but he saw the laughter she worked so hard to subdue. The spark he felt in his chest - the one that never quite subsided in her presence, not even when he was livid with her - threatened to burst into a full fledged wildfire, but Jiya's audible clearing of her throat put a halt to the foolish flirtation that was sure to come next.

"So as much fun as it is to place my usual will-they-won't-they bet at the beginning of every jump, I have a...a _feeling_ that this one may require some extra focus. Right, Wyatt?"

 _Subtle_ , he thought with a roll of his eyes. _Very subtle_ , _Jiya_.

"Let's get to it then," he answered shortly, waving her out ahead of him. "You're staying with us this time."

Jiya stopped mid-step. "What? No, that's not going to change any- "

"It's not up for discussion. Don't you think it's pretty obvious by now that they're not lugging Rufus around with them on these jumps? We haven't seen him, haven't heard him, nada. And to that point, Emma seems to have learned her lesson from Savannah too. Either she's parking their time machine way farther out than before, or they found a way to change up the cloaking technology to keep you from detecting it. Hell, that might be the only reason they even wanted Rufus in the first place."

"But - "

"We stay together," Wyatt repeated firmly.

She pursed her lips, a disparaging smirk contorting her face. "Pretending this decision has anything to do with Rufus or their damn time machine is really a new low for you, Wyatt."

"Okay, what am I missing?"

It was Lucy who'd finally broken into the fray, and her dark eyes were clearly missing none of the unnamed tension that crackled within her field of vision. "I've barely said a word about why we're here and the two of you are already incredibly keyed up like you know what we're in for."

Wyatt waited with a solid ball of lead in his stomach as Jiya's jaw worked overtime to keep the lid on her frustration.

"Nothing," she said eventually, not that anyone with eyes would have believed her. "You're missing nothing. We'll do this your way for now - " she jabbed an accusing finger at Wyatt, "but don't forget who's really in charge here, Logan. You're a freelance gunman, nothing more."

It took an extraordinary amount of restraint to keep himself from challenging that statement, for calling her out on her fifteen minutes of experience in the field, but there was a part of him that knew she was far more right than she was wrong. It was the black cloud looming over them that spurred his sudden change in tactics. The more eyes - and guns - he had on his side, the better chance he had of defying their destiny. _Lucy's_ destiny, to be more specific.

And if Lucy noticed how ridiculously close he stuck to her side as they walked, she didn't mention it. Maybe it wasn't a whole lot closer than the norm since he was more or less always on guard where her safety was concerned, but this was different. This was high alert, each breath feeling more strained than the last, a volatile trigger of dread chasing at every shadow he saw, marking each peripheral movement around them. Lucy's explanation of Oklahoma's current status as a territory in the midst of a tumultuous land rush might as well have been bouncing visibly off of his skull for all the more he could concentrate. Historical context could go take a long hike off a short pier. He didn't care why they were here. Why didn't matter on this one. _What_ , on the other hand, was going to make all the difference in the world.

Especially in his world.

"This is it," Lucy said with the familiar note of authority that was equal parts excited and cautious. "Most accounts estimate around 100,000 men were lined up, ready to lay claim to the land that had been stripped away from several tribes of Native Americans."

He couldn't deny the impact of seeing the enormous crowd that was gathered, the innumerable amount of horses and wagons, the hordes of people that extended for what had to be miles in either direction.

Jiya, however, was less than impressed. "Thousands of white settlers acting like they have a right to something that's belonged to another people group for generations? Wild. What a phenomenon."

"I wish I could say that this fails to qualify as one of our finest moments, but..." Lucy trailed off, a look of revulsion putting a damper on her former gleam of wonder.

"There _aren't_ many fine moments at all?" Jiya finished with a snarky half-smile.

She gave a bleak nod in return. "Exactly."

"So how does this go?" Wyatt asked around the coiling unease that snaked all the way up to his windpipe. "Someone just yells go and they all stampede across the border like suburban moms in a Walmart parking lot on Black Friday?"

"Canon fire, actually, not the word go. But other than that, you pretty much have it figured out."

He glanced warily past Lucy to catch Jiya's eye. "At least we're on this side of the action, right? I'd hate to get caught up in that insanity."

"We might not have a choice."

That comment brought his attention back to Lucy in an instant. "Why? You think Emma wants a piece of Oklahoma to call her own?"

"There has to be some reason she came here, right? And trust me when I say there is literally nothing else going on today. This event was huge, Wyatt."

"And how do you suggest we pinpoint her in this crowd? This is a legitimate needle in a haysta- "

" _Rufus_!"

Jiya was gone without warning, screaming herself hoarse as her feet flew, dust streaming after her. Wyatt grabbed Lucy's wrist and pulled her along with him as he took off, calling out to no avail as he fought for space in the crowd. "Jiya!? Jiya, _wait_ , dammit!"

But she didn't wait, and in another moment, he understood exactly why. It...it _did_ look like Rufus, but he was positioned way out ahead of them, nearly at the front of the line with two solidly muscled guys - guys Wyatt regrettably recognized from prior jumps - pinning him in at either side.

As thrilled as Wyatt was to see his friend alive and presumably well, there was no mistaking this for anything other than exactly what it was.

"Jiya, wait, it's a - "

The word _trap_ was lost with the first boom of a canon, so near, so loud, that the horizon itself seemed to blur before him. The pulse of a gigantic crusade swallowed them with it, sifting ahead faster than he ever could have anticipated. Lucy stumbled beside him, her arm slipping through his grasp as several people shouldered her out of the way, but as Wyatt turned to regain his hold, he was forced to watch in sheer horror as she purposely dropped back.

"You go!" she shouted with a brave set of her features. "I'll only slow you down!"

"No, _Lucy_ \- "

But she was already disintegrating from view, falling farther away as torrents of determined settlers continued gushing forward. "It's Rufus! Just go, Wyatt! Go!"

He attempted one upstream step toward her but was quickly met with a hard hit to the center of his chest, the unapologetic ferocity of a scrappy down-on-his-luck bastard who was desperate to own land for what was probably the first time in his life. Wyatt understood. He knew that level of dirt-poor despondence better than most. Didn't change the fact that he wanted to lodge his fist into every smudged face that got between him and Lucy.

Another roar of his name diverted that urge, but it wasn't Lucy who was calling for help. Jiya's voice...Jiya sounding like the earth was crumbling beneath her feet.

He knew what happened next if he didn't fight his way back to Lucy. Jiya had given him the play-by-play from her unexpected vision, the only one she'd experienced in months. He could chose to confront fate, to spit in the face of what was foretold, but there was no telling where the reverberations of that shift would take them. If Jiya was the one who fell behind enemy lines, he and Lucy would be castaways with no exit strategy. There was no protocol for Jiya getting taken to the present without them. It would be Emma's ultimate retaliation - Wyatt and Lucy forced to try their luck in the 1890s with no pilot and no backup plan.

There was a physical rip inside of him, a split between his body and his soul, a tear that may never mend depending on what unfolded from this point onward.

He was choosing the vision. The hazy delusion of meant-to-be. He _hated_ meant-to-be.

"Jiya?!" he called as he made the most difficult about-face of his life, "Jiya, hold on, okay!"

Wyatt charged ahead until he could spot her struggling to hold her own against an opponent twice her size, and then his knuckles took over, slamming bone to bone with one of the men who'd been guarding Rufus. His first few cracks were nothing to the mountain of a brute. Another wasted punch and his body was suddenly launched into the air, sailing spine-first over the asshole's shoulder till he collided with the dust bowl of cracked ground.

But that skeleton-jarring crash came with its own brand of silver lining - a crystal clear shot. Wyatt had his gun out before brain-dead Goliath could turn the whole way around, and then his only priority was to roll out of the way before he got sandwiched between three hundred pounds of beef and the packed bed of dirt beneath him.

His success wasn't met with celebration or gratitude. When he found Jiya's face again, her dusky eyes were welling with misery. "He - he vanished, Wyatt. I saw him, I swear I did, but I - I lost him for a second, and then he was just... _gone_."

In her right mind, she would have known what that really meant. The Mothership - the _other_ Mothership - had been concealed, hidden in plain sight right on the other side of that territory line. If one of the Rittenhouse thugs had been assigned to getting Rufus back into the time machine and another had been poised to block Jiya from reaching them while they escaped, that left Emma to...to pilot the machine, or to capture Lucy? She couldn't have done both. It wasn't possible.

Jiya reached for his arm. "Lucy...is she…?"

He didn't answer her half-formed question. There wasn't time. He did an abrupt one-eighty without explanation, not that Jiya required any further information. She knew the terror that pressed against his heart even better than he did. She was the one who'd seen it for herself, after all.

He shot a frenzied bullet skyward to clear a path back through the masses. There were words of regret getting distorted between them, fractures of Jiya's voice getting tangled up in the pandemonium that rose up all around them, fragments he didn't bother to catch. It didn't matter. None of it mattered. There was a very real chance that nothing was ever going to matter again if he didn't reach Lucy before...before -

"Wyatt! This way, okay?"

It was Jiya rescuing him now, not the other way around. His brain was shutting his down, feet moving in God knows what direction, as aimless as he was despairing.

"I just - " he stopped, scanned the melee for anything - anyone - that seemed familiar, but it was all awash in the same hopeless fog. "I - I don't know where I lost her."

"Hey, we can handle this, right? It's the reason we put a tracker on her. We'll get back to the Mothership and check the CPU, alright? I have her linked. We can do this."

She was speaking to him as if he was toeing the line of a cognitive breakdown. Which he probably was, to be fair.

He let her take the lead. Let her shove him up into the Mothership when all he wanted to do was run back and comb through every face across the whole state of Oklahoma - or whatever the hell it currently was, a piece of Lucy's earlier speech he'd most likely missed - until he had her in front of him again. Thank God Jiya had found the presence of mind to get her shit together and simultaneously propel his ass into gear. She'd rallied herself into clearheaded action while Wyatt still felt like every muscle in his body was raging in excruciating protest at the thought of walking away prematurely.

Unsurprisingly, hers was the better judgment that prevailed. There was a steady green light on the uppermost panel of the nav screen. A light that indicated a gap of nearly 130 years between them and Lucy.

They were going home. He was loading himself up with every means of firepower available. He was nuking Rittenhouse headquarters to kingdom come if that was what it took to get her back. Those were the promises that kept him going, the incentives that freed up his hands to strap himself in like a rational soldier. He kept repeating it as his temper thrashed at the task of tearing through layers of antiquated clothing once they'd landed, trading them for tactical gear as soon as he had his legs beneath him in the present.

Jiya rattled off a series of logistics from her bank of computers, cautioning him that the time machine needed to recharge, but that caveat trailed away into nothingness as her eyes widened above the glow of the monitor. "Wyatt, they're….they're less than an hour from here. She's showing up just outside of Sacramento."

He blinked up at her from where he'd been pacing at the weapons arsenal, stunned into two whole seconds of silence. "Okay, new plan. I drive, you join me as soon as that hunk of metal has enough juice to hop from their place to a different one of ours, and we're home free."

"But - "

"But nothing. We know Lucy's there, Rufus is probably with her, and if you say it's an hour away, I say I can cut that time down by almost half."

" _Half_? I'm failing to see how you'll be able to save anyone from inside central booking."

Wyatt wanted to repay that comment with a snappy joke of his own, to insist that no cop in this state or the next posed a threat when it came to catching up with him, but the words stuck in the back of his throat. He urged himself to take a deep breath as he fastened his holster into place, a rustling memory taunting him with each flex of his fingers - the teasing impression of Lucy's weight as she straddled him, her dark-lidded appreciation at the sight of him in a holster and little else.

"Half," he insisted with a rasping bit of gravel working its way into his voice. "You get there when you can, alright?"

A raw burst of fear thundered through Jiya's eyes even as she valiantly attempted to push past it. "And miss all the fun? That's just like you to hog all the glory, ya know."

"I know." With the straps of his vest tested and his helmet cinched into place, Wyatt chewed up the distance between them and gave her shoulder a firm squeeze. "I'll keep a comm link on if I can, alright? See you soon."

Jiya nodded, pinning a wobbly smile to her lips. "Soon. I'm holding you to that. Keep an eye out for our boys in blue."

Wyatt's expression couldn't have been much more reliable than hers, but he made an effort to offer a reassuring smirk all the same. They both knew he'd risk a hell of a lot more than a couple hundred dollars in traffic violations before this day was over, but for her sake, he would gladly pretend otherwise.


	14. Leveling The Scales

_a/n: Only a few more chapters to go! I started editing this chapter at a significantly higher level of alertness than how I ended, so beware of increased mistakes and typos along the way. I haven't managed to respond to the comments on chapter 13 yet (maybe tomorrow!), but I figured you'd rather have me ease you off of that Lucy-is-captured cliffhanger of an ending than get a slew of half-coherent PMs instead ;) So with that said, I am incredibly thankful for the consistent support!_

* * *

Another quarter of an inch and his plan would have been shot to smithereens. That was all the space he had, if that. His means of entry didn't allow for much wiggle room, but wiggling wasn't on the agenda. Burning this entire building to the ground, however, was a more distinct possibility.

With Jiya still in his ear, Wyatt was able to worm his way through the warehouse's network of air ducts without a grain of doubt as to whether or not he was crawling in the right direction. The blip that was Lucy still flickered steadily across her screen back at the safehouse, and with the Mothership not yet charged, this was all the more backup he had - the constancy of a dependable voice telling him when to turn; a living person on the other end of the line who could pay him some meager tribute if he didn't make it out of alive.

He was far less concerned with that particular outcome than the one that teased menacingly at the outer fringes of his brain - arriving too late, finding a tracking device pinned to nothing but an empty shell, losing Lucy from right between his fingertips, because the entire universe was committed to one overarching plot of fucking him over at every opportunity.

The line crackled and then Jiya spoke again, detaching him from his grisliest nightmare. "Okay, another left turn and…"

"And?"

"And you'll be directly overhead in about thirty seconds."

Caution laced her voice, but she withheld the lecture. Probably because she knew it would be wasted on him by now.

"How much longer for you?" he whispered back as he negotiated the final corner.

"Five minutes. Maybe less."

"Don't come inside."

A loud gust of breath blew across the line. "Wyatt - "

"Just tell me what direction I'm running in, Jiya. I need an escape route, not an added liability."

"I'm trained," she protested stiffly. "I'm just as good as any other field agent. I - "

"I know. You're damn good, I'm not arguing that, but what I need is a pilot who can get our asses out. _Fast_. That's the bottom line. You with me?" There was more breathing. Huffing, resentful, ready-to-tear-him-a-new-one breathing. "Jiya?"

"There's a clear spot on the north side of the building. About forty-five degrees northeast of your current position."

He exhaled grim relief. "In case I don't get a chance at saying it later, I love you, Jiya Marri."

She scoffed, but that sound did nothing to mask the grin weaving through her words. "Save it for your damsel in distress, Logan."

His next response - one that would adamantly warn her off from ever using that same term in Lucy's presence - was promptly forgotten when a muffled rise and fall of noise echoed from up ahead, snagging his attention and accelerating his pulse. He signed off with a curt farewell, not waiting for her to return the sentiment before the link went quiet. Another moment of concentration, a few more inches forward, and he could hear the repulsive sneer in Emma's voice.

A sneer he couldn't wait to wipe ruthlessly off of her face.

"Poor little Princess. Dethroned and disinherited without dear ole' mom, no one here to champion your cause from behind the scenes this time around. How does that make you feel?"

If Lucy extended any response, the sound of it didn't reach Wyatt's ears. The gnawing pit that had taken up residence in his gut grew a little wider.

"I'll ask it again, Lucy. Where's your ragtag team of mosquitoes hiding their time machine? You give us a location and this is over. No one has to get hurt, not even you."

"I told you, I don't know." Lucy's voice trembled, but the ire behind each word was undeniable. Wyatt drew a breath fueled with combustible adrenaline, straining forward to hear more. "They don't tell me, okay? I never know where the hell we are. _Never_. For this exact reason, I'm guessing."

Hearing her hitting that particular nail on the head made him want to recoil. Little did she know, it was far more than a random hunch that had held them back from confiding in her.

"One scrap of information and we let you see Rufus. It's a damn good offer."

"An offer I couldn't match even if I wanted to," Lucy spat back angrily. "Besides, what reason do I have to believe that bullshit? We didn't even make the jump with him. How do I know he's actually here? You've done nothing to instill any sort of confidence."

Wyatt shifted his weight back and went to work on dismantling a strip of the ductwork as they continued to argue, holding his breath until he was sure the move had gone undetected.

His first glimpse downward produced a twisted slap of déjà vu. It was just as Jiya had described it. Tears streamed down Lucy's cheeks, dark tendrils of hair were plastered to her face, a streak of blood was crusted to one corner of her mouth, and that fate-stricken flowered dress was torn at the shoulder. Even in a state of total disarray, resilient poise practically leapt off of her, stubborn resolve keeping her spine straight, her chin pointed out, eyebrows bent together. She may not have given a rat's ass about their creepy fascination for family dynasties, but there was no two ways about it - Lucy Preston was far more regal than the whole damn lot of Rittenhouse pricks put together.

"I don't think you're comprehending the stakes this time around," Emma intoned with a sickening smile. "I don't give a damn who your great-great-piece-of-shit-granddaddy was. Something tells me I wouldn't have liked the guy anyway. So I'm really under no obligation to keep you in one piece, and I have an associate you might remember who's been rather enthusiastic about the prospect of taking you out herself. Maybe it's time I let her off her leash."

Only one _associate_ came to Wyatt's mind as he processed that ultimatum, and with absolute hellfire climbing through his esophagus, he sank back into position and made one final sweep of the room. Emma was in his crosshairs. She had one guard stationed on this side of the door, and from his current angle, Wyatt could easily pick him off with a second consecutive shot before the guy had a chance at properly assessing the situation. All he needed was for Lucy to stay exactly where she was, and while that sort of guarantee was typically a gigantic gamble where she was concerned, Emma had inadvertently done him a solid this time around - Lucy was bound tightly to a chair and had no means of getting in his way.

Win-win-win. He fired without another breath of hesitation.

Emma collapsed with a sharp grunt. Her goon at the door jerked a gun upward just as Wyatt anticipated he would, but the poor jackass had no chance. He dropped too, falling over Emma's body in quick succession. Wyatt kept his gun trained on the door, not willing to risk the draw of additional company even with a silencer to dull the reverberations of his shots.

A cowering noise from Lucy ripped his attention to her as she bucked against her restraints. There was no way she could see him from where she sat, and her fear urged him forward in less than an instant.

Wyatt dropped to the ground with a reflexive roll in her direction, aiming another watchful glance toward the door before he was at her side. "Hey, you okay?"

"How - " she extracted a shallow breath, working double time to keep her flurry of nerves in check. "I'm fine, but how are you here so - we've barely been here more than - than..."

"You're wearing a tracking device," he confessed with zero preamble as he yanked a knife from its spot on his belt and started sawing through the cords that held her. "It's connected to the pager, which transmits a signal to the Mothership's CPU. I know that's going to totally weird you out - "

"You've got that right," she retorted without much conviction.

"Judging by your current predicament, one would think you'd appreciate the gesture."

"Once again, you've got that right."

The attempt at dry humor couldn't overcome the magnitude of what she'd suffered. He heard the small sniffle she sought to conceal, and it took a herculean amount of determination for Wyatt to not waste precious seconds on his frivolous urge to mop up her tears or get transfixed by his own relief.

He wouldn't let it derail him, but he was reveling in it all the same. She was okay. He'd gotten here in time. She was _okay_.

His resolve to stay on task was obliterated once she was free, not for his own lack of gritted sense of purpose, but surprisingly, for _hers_. Lucy heaved herself out of the chair before the last coil of rope had hit the floor, bombarding Wyatt with a death grip of a hug that sent him reeling into another time, another place, another stratosphere. Lucy Preston's were arms wound around him with a tenacity that would make a lesser man go blue from oxygen deprivation. But, him? He could handle it, and even if he couldn't, Wyatt was sure he would do just fine with a temporary shortage of oxygen.

With her face jammed into the crook of his neck, she stammered her way through an aftershock of several heart-stopping syllables. "I - I thought I'd never see you again."

He didn't remind her of the obvious contradiction - as recently as yesterday, she seemed fairly convinced that she didn't _want_ to ever see him again. The breathtaking reversal in that opinion was a powerful drug to his already overwhelmed nervous system.

"We...we get out of here first," he murmured a little erratically, "then I - I need you to level with me on just what you mean by that, ma'am."

Lucy nodded, a few strands of hair teasing across his face as she withdrew. "Yeah, solid plan."

He wove the fingers of his free hand through one of hers, each heady wave of frenetic energy decreasing in its power over him as he let the solace of her skin bring him back to earth. He pulled her closely behind him, an unlikely contrast of her rustling 19th century skirts clashing against his tactical uniform of all black, a perfectly bizarre snapshot of a mission that was so unlike any other. It just so happened to also be the most important mission of his life.

He wedged Lucy behind him at the doorway, diligently scanning for any sign of activity in either direction before plunging out into the bright white corridor.

Three steps in the direction of freedom and the building's eerie blankness was broken with a burst of open fire. The first bullet hit Wyatt squarely in the torso, robbing him of his breath and likely leaving one hell of a bruise, but doing no further damage thanks to the Kevlar barrier around his chest.

His opponent was no fool, though. Wyatt swung around and began to return fire just as a second shot plunged through his arm, sending his gun clattering and ripping a deep curse from his throat.

" _Wyatt_!"

He did his best to keep Lucy tucked behind him, but she tore free with a tenacity he wasn't able to match. The roar in his ears wasn't loud enough to drown out the resulting scuffle - two feverishly persistent voices, both striking a flame of profound recognition inside of him. By the time he was blinking the blinding pain from his eyes, Lucy stood like a statue before him, her back shielding him as best she could, his gun trembling in her hands.

Jessica matched her stance from no more than five or six feet away, her own gun forsaken between her feet, a bloodied hand clutched against her chest.

So he'd gotten a good shot off on her, apparently blasting the gun right out of her grasp. Too bad some scrambled neuron in his brain still seemed incapable of labeling that feat as a victory when she was on the other end of the barrel.

"Back up," Lucy demanded shakily, her voice eeking out between rigidly clamped rows of teeth. "Now."

"I think this is a matter better left to husband and wife, if you don't mind."

"I do mind. Back the hell up. I'm not asking again."

He easily perceived each pitfall of the situation. That gun was far better off in his hands, but even the quickest transfer from Lucy's grip to his could give Jess the opening she needed to snatch up her own weapon. The woman he knew - the wife he'd loved - didn't possess a single combat-ready reflex, but there was no counting on this Jess being anything like his. Her jaw was sharper than a razor, disgust filled her eyes as she stared unblinkingly at Lucy, and there was no second guessing the itch of her uninjured hand. She was ready to seize any thread of weakness and pull with the bloodlust of a trained assassin.

But Lucy being the one to shoot Jess...that was a trade-off worthy of the devil of himself. It wasn't - he couldn't…

"You're not going to do it," she taunted with a steely smile. "You're Lucy Preston. You're not made of the same stuff that we are. "

"That's for damn sure," Lucy grumbled beneath her breath.

"Shooting Wyatt's wife? The woman who loved him, took care of him, vowed 'till death do us part' light years ahead of him even learning your name? I'm calling bullshit on that right now. You won't do it. You can't."

A massive shudder rocked Lucy's shoulders. She was succumbing to the war against her better nature. Risk be damned, he had to get that gun away from her or they were both finished. Wyatt had a hand stretched forward, ready to ease it from her white-knuckled grip, but Jess was ready to pounce at his first twitch of movement.

The repercussions had to be irrelevant. They _had_ to be. Jessica with a gun in hand was the signature on Lucy's death certificate, and his would surely be next in line.

He was bellowing an unfathomable order before his head was even on board with his mouth. "Shoot, Lucy! _Now_!"

Lucy's body snapped backwards into his as Jessica's knees crumbled beneath her. Piercing vibrations of shock were running through her, convulsions so fierce, he was half-convinced she'd somehow taken a hit even though the other gun had never gotten off the floor.

The disorder in his own head pressed against him on all sides. It already required too great an effort to keep an arm around Lucy. To speak words, to formulate a response - any response - to what had just happened felt like a mountain too steep to be climbed. The reverberations of that lone gunshot circled him relentlessly.

Jess... _his_ Jess or not, she was still Jessica, and she was…

A shout of several voices rang down the hall, too distant to pose an immediate threat, but strident enough to clear the eclipsing daze from Wyatt's mind. One voice rose above the others, a voice that was supposed to be out of commission. _Emma_.

Wyatt liberated his gun from Lucy's barely-there hold, whirling her around with him, some absent corner of his mind worrying that his wounded arm wouldn't be enough to keep her listing frame from toppling over.

A scattered trail of blood outlined the meandering path from where he stood all the way to the end of the corridor...a path Jessica had mostly likely sacrificed her life to defend, just so Emma could keep her own. He'd realized long ago that Jess had no loyalty to him, not anymore, but somehow - beyond all discernible reason - a part of him couldn't cope with the reality he'd just lived. Her ultimate devotion to Rittenhouse...to Emma fucking Whitmore...had relinquished her to a fate as tragic as this. Her second chance at a long life had been snuffed out just as senselessly as the first.

His feet surged mechanically ahead. There was an outlying echo behind him, a whimper and a footfall that he belatedly knew to be Lucy's, but he wasn't able to tap into the part of his brain that meant to warn her off, to keep her at bay. The wheels had fallen off and there was no processing his actions, no slowing his momentum.

He wasn't charging down that hallway for himself. He was storming the gates for Jess, an innocent who never had any claim to this goddamn war, never should have so much as overheard the name _Rittenhouse_ , never been asked to spill blood for their abhorrent cause. And for Lucy, forever changed, all because years of her mother's influence had been wagered against her on night one of this all-consuming appointment with time itself. She'd never again be the same woman who loved and fought and cared as freely and eagerly as anyone he'd ever known. She was crippled with fear now, shackled to her pain. He wanted to give her everything, but with the sins of so many others - Wyatt's included - blackening her heart, she no longer knew how to receive any of it without keeping one eye cast over her shoulder. She was suspicious, uncertain, permanently marked by too much loss.

He had to do this for Rufus too; their comedian of a friend, isolated, lost, a prisoner for far too long. And for Jiya, who hadn't been herself from the moment Rufus was taken away from her. For the sacrifice of good people, the best people. People who would never escape the taint of this tangled, messy brawl for power and control.

And yeah, Wyatt was maybe running straight into the eye of the storm for his own sake too, because the only two women he'd ever loved were damaged and destroyed by the crushing tide of Rittenhouse's plague upon their lives.

Red-hot rage fueled every step, but it still wasn't enough. Emma's trail ended at the foot of her resuscitated Mothership, the one that threw Wyatt straight onto his ass just as he got close enough to offload a fleet of bullets. One flash of dark skin at the helm and he knew he couldn't risk it.

Rufus, with a silver barrel pointed directly to his temple, had been the one to push the button that brought Wyatt up short. The hatch closed, the machine whistled out of sight, and Rufus was gone with it.

Apparently Emma was living to see another day.

* * *

Lucy knew that look of flattened dejection. The face of failure. A face she'd arranged for him through her own actions time and time again since they'd reunited. She couldn't help but assume she'd aided in bringing this latest misery upon him too.

One squeeze of her index finger and she was forever branded with the title of his wife's killer.

She decided it was best to keep quiet on their way out even with a hive full of questions swarming her head. There was still so much about this whole ordeal that didn't add up for her, and that wasn't the end of it. A multifaceted defense unfurled through her mind, an airtight exoneration that boiled down to one point - _you told me to shoot_ \- begged for release, but she wouldn't dare be so selfish.

Today Wyatt had walked - no, _ran_ \- away from Jessica's lifeless body for a second time. No word of apology or plea for understanding could possibly be worth the effort now.

Maybe it wasn't as bad as Lucy thought…static limbs, pooling blood...that didn't mean - there was still a chance, wasn't there? That same woman had certainly defied much larger odds.

But the probability of Jessica Logan cheating death again was actively making her woozy, so she stuffed that line of thinking down with a crucial blaze of self-preservation.

Lucy took the lead when they met Jiya outside, murmuring as few sentences as possible to relay the Reader's Digest version of their escape. Wyatt only broke his silence to divulge that he'd seen Rufus for himself, blandly declaring that he was well enough to pilot a time machine if that was any consolation, and then his expression was blankly impassible again.

They dispersed quietly once the Mothership was on home turf again. _The farmhouse_ , Lucy thought was a twinge of discomfort. They were back in that cavernous barn again, the one that was attached to a knot of rooms that housed too much of her shame. Surely this place was far too confined to properly give shelter to the craggy hill of Wyatt's grief.

She tried to go straight to bed, pausing to do little more than trade her petticoats for pajamas and rinse away the rust-colored gathering of dried blood from her face. An hour of staring at the planked ceiling brought her more aggravation, more dread, more guilt. Every stab of remorse she'd ever felt over her role in Wyatt's pain was now doubled, maybe tripled. Why was she - why was the whole damn world, for that matter - so intent on punishing him like this? She could hardly imagine a man less deserving of it than him.

Hour two passed in the same state of agitation, and she wasn't willing to subject herself to a third. She stuffed her feet into a pair of fuzzy slippers - slippers that had been hidden away here for later use upon their last exit, the strangest semblance of nomadic homeyness she'd ever known - and padded downstairs to the kitchen. Her first visit to this place had required copious amounts of alcohol to make it even remotely habitable. If only Lucy could find some remnant of that stash, then maybe she'd have a real shot at eventually closing her eyes without a mournfully long-faced Wyatt mocking her attempts at claiming a slice of restful oblivion.

The joke was inevitably on her. Mournfully long-faced Wyatt was a concrete figure in the dimly lit dining area, more compellingly heartbreaking in the flesh than any distorted replica her subconscious could conjure up in his place. The stash she'd been seeking was displayed before him in the form of a tall amber bottle, the contents of which were partially spent in the clear glass tumbler at his fingertips.

"They say something about this, you know," Lucy said quietly. "Drinking alone…"

He glanced up with red-stained eyes, seeming not at all taken aback by her sudden intrusion. "They who?"

"You know... _they_. The collective masses. People with insight."

"People with insight would be scared shitless to spend a single day in our shoes."

She couldn't deny the truth of that statement. Her mouth was too dry, too uselessly vacant, but something of substance had to come out. She had to try. "I know you're - you have every right to be upset, but she's - she isn't…"

"Isn't worth a drunken eulogy?" he asked with some unexpected twinkle of humor in his crinkled expression. "Rest assured. It's only a toast. You won't find me under this table in the morning."

"A toast, huh?"

Wyatt beckoned her forward with a signal from two of his fingers, smirking a little sadly as she stared back at him dumbly, but it was still a Wyatt Logan smirk all the same. "C'mon. It's the least I can offer her now."

The solid requisite weight of culpability kept her from uprooting her feet. "I - I'm so sorry, Wyatt. I - "

"You did exactly what I told you to do," he answered solemnly, "and if you hadn't, neither of us would be here right now. I'm sure of that."

Lucy lowered her gaze to the floor, speechless in the wake of his startling black-and-white clarity.

"Did you come down here for a drink, or didn't you?"

"How did you - " her eyes skipped upwards, coming to rest on another one of his patented smirks. "I never said that I - "

"You didn't have to say it," he intercepted with a shrug.

Whether that meant she'd earned a strong drink, or if her motives were really _that_ paper thin, there was no fighting the basic conclusion. She was definitely here for a dose of whatever it took to numb the noise in her head, and if he was issuing an invitation, she was powerless to turn it down.

She took a clean tumbler from the oak cabinet and settled into a chair adjacent to his, allowing him the privilege of pouring her poison. With the flutter of fingers that still seemed to reek of gunshot residue despite her insanely thorough scrubbing, Lucy took hold of her drink and tapped the rim gently to his. "To Jessica."

Wyatt smiled a shadowed smile, eyes alight with thousands of deafening emotions. "To Jessica. Wherever she may really be, this one's for her."

They drank in unison. The burn in her throat quelled some raucous element inside of her, helping to smooth down the rawest of her nervous edges. She studied Wyatt in the low light, finding him astonishingly steady regardless of his bandaged arm, his limitless suffering.

She didn't have to voice the observation. He stared back with a wry hook to his lips, replying to her wordless reflection without prompting. "My Jess has been gone for a very long time, Lucy. She didn't die today. She died years ago."

"I was with her, you know...in Oklahoma. She found me after we got separated and held me at gunpoint until Emma could...retrieve us."

His thumb circled the rim of his glass, their entire tragedy of a day pulling severely at his face. "I didn't know that."

"I kept...I don't know - " Lucy floundered helplessly, " - kept trying to find something in her that said...said Wyatt's _wife_ , and it just wasn't there. All this time, with everything you've told me, everything I've tried to convince myself of...is it crazy to say I wanted to be happy for you guys even when - even when it meant anything but happiness for me?"

"It's not crazy. It's noble. The crazy part is me not seeing her for the pawn she really was. It should have been blatant from the minute she walked back into my life."

"But you don't have to - " she stopped, rearranged her faltering feelings, and started again. "That's not fair to you. And you have every right to not handle this well. You know that, right? I don't need to be shielded."

His good hand slid across the table to brush lightly over hers. "I know. And that's not what I'm doing."

Lucy sipped haltingly, fighting every instinct that told her to draw back, stealing strength from the blissful blur of alcohol on her tongue. "You're sure?"

"I'm sure," he said with the slightest bob of his head. "The way I see it, I've lost her twice already. Once because I was a selfish bastard who needed to grow the hell up, and it cost her everything. Then the second time came around, and I was still a selfish bastard who was so focused on proving I'd changed, that I...I lost sight of the people who'd changed me, and that cost us all too damn much. Selfish...selfish can't be an option for me anymore."

"You've anything but selfish these days, Wyatt," she muttered at the table's distressed surface, incapable of maintaining eye contact as the reverse of those words scratched across her mind. She... _she_ knew selfish. She saw it mirrored back at her every time she caught a glimpse of her hollowed-out reflection.

"I don't know about that," he answered in a stale tone. He pulled his hand away, rubbing it across the back of his neck instead. "You want to hear something truly awful? There's a reason we were so prepared to come after you today, Lucy. We - Jiya and I - we _knew_. She saw it. She had a vision, one of you in that same dress you wore in Oklahoma, and...and she told me. She told me before you'd joined us, before you even knew Rufus was missing."

The pieces were falling together, snippets of several mismatched conversations piling higher as the enigma of so many trivial secrets and guarded whispers came to light. "She...she saw what, exactly? Me in that room with Emma?"

"Yes," he croaked wearily. "It's the reason we - "

"Kept me in the dark about virtually everything?"

Wyatt nodded, grim lines of apology carving around his eyes and collecting at the corners of his mouth. "We knew what kind of questions she'd ask you, which is why we never disclosed our location at any of the bases. And I know it's total bullshit, but I didn't want to scare you off by telling you about it. Hell, I didn't know if - if getting Rufus back would even be _possible_ if you weren't there, because that's the way Jiya saw it - you, with us in some capacity." He tossed back the remainder of his drink with a scowl. "Doesn't get much more self-serving than that, does it? Not to mention that it was incredibly manipulative, a complete abuse of information and power and - and everything you've been talking about, right?"

Her well-worn route to furious indignation was mysteriously failing to make itself known. She dug further, rummaging for the cliff notes of that venomous speech she'd delivered in Houston, but the longer she searched, the emptier she felt. It was one hell of an ass-backwards choice he'd made, keeping vital information from her while quietly strategizing for the worst possible outcome, but he'd delivered on his reckless shitshow of a plan. Lucy was safe, at home in the warmth of this cozy kitchen nook, sporting no more damage than a few surface scratches and gratefully drinking her way toward a half-decent night's sleep. It had all happened within a matter of hours - not days, not weeks. _Hours_.

"I was already a major flight risk," she admitted slowly. "I can see why you weren't exactly eager to double down on those poor odds…"

"Lucy, c'mon," he implored, desperate to communicate every ounce of his anguish. "Don't. Don't you dare downplay this. I never should have - "

"No," she agreed, her tone far more pacifying than anything she'd managed in quite some time, "you shouldn't have. But we both have our fair share of never-should-haves by now, don't we?"

"You could say that," he agreed in a nearly indistinguishable mumble.

"Can we...can we maybe just call it even?"

It was a brazen request. His slate may not have been lily white, but hers felt impossibly polluted after everything she'd put him through in the last few weeks. From where she sat, he was under no obligation to make such an unbalanced bargain. He should have shot her down without any further consideration.

But he was _Wyatt_. Far too prone to baring his ragged heart again and again. "That's really what you - you'd actually be okay with that?"

"Yes," she said just above a whisper, far too taken in by the soft glow of hope possessing his blue eyes.

His tumbler tipped to hers, initiating another token of symbolic understanding between them. "To leveling the scales, ma'am."

She drank to that in a heartbeat, swallowing fast enough to make the room orbit a little faster once her glass returned to the table.

"More?"

More? _More_ would surely sabotage their tentative camaraderie, catapulting her inhibitions straight into a dangerous no-fly zone of dubious judgment. More would undoubtedly take their newfound truce and flip it on its head, dragging Lucy back into that same place where the smallest dose of indulgence had ended in a one-way ticket out of Wyatt's life.

"No thanks," she said with tight smile, the refusal not coming nearly as easily as it should have. "Not tonight, anyway."

Wyatt seemed to find a surprising sliver of charm in that answer. The most convincing smile of the night eased over his mouth, and before she had any hope of preparing herself, he was leaning over the table and pressing a gilded kiss to her cheek.

"Another time then," he answered in a honeyed rumble of his deep voice. "Goodnight, Lucy."

She rose to her feet in a curious haze, one that could only be attributed to another slip in her ever-weakening stance against his stubborn affection. "Goodnight, Wyatt."

Whether it was the hush of liquor to her brain or the too-good-to-be-true offering of forgiveness from the one person who had every right to collect on all her debts, Lucy faded away almost immediately when her head met the pillow this time, her shoulders finally unburdened from the strain of so many regrets.

 _Too good to be true_ , she reminded herself. _Too good to..._

She was asleep before she could assert that same line of defense a second time.


	15. Whole Again

_a/n: hello again :) I fought valiantly through the editing process last night, but sleep got the best of me in the end - sorry for the delay! Hopefully this chapter will be worth the wait!_

* * *

The clatter of brisk activity - a creaking door, feet pounding over the old staircase, two voices climbing above each other with urgency - combined together to raise Lucy from a sleep that felt damn near death.

She was sore. She was listless with exhaustion. She needed another hour before movement felt like even the remotest of possibilities.

But the heavy stomp of boots from the first floor belonged to Wyatt, and Wyatt was never heavy-footed unless he had a reason to be keyed up about something. Duty must be calling.

Lucy wrapped a cardigan around her shoulders and made her foggy descent to the bottom of the steps. One glass of whiskey and a few hours of sleep were jumbling together with the ache of being captured, roughened up, and potentially killing her sort-of-ex's sort-of-ex. She hoped today's jump ranked low on the scale of time-altering disasters, because she really needed a strong cup of coffee before they took off for Rittenhouse's decade of choice.

Wyatt was doing a rundown of some sort when she found him on her way to the kitchen, scanning a variety of weapons and equipment laid out on the table they'd lingered over the previous night. He picked up the vest that had saved his life yesterday, just to discard it again with a short huffing dismissal. She could only see part of his face, but the deep etchings of a frown were strikingly evident from where she stood.

He didn't go to this much trouble every time they left, so the brooding over his supplies really didn't add up, but that wasn't the strangest part. Her presence had gone peculiarly unnoticed, and she couldn't remember the last time she'd entered a room and not been met with an immediate look of alarm or annoyance or - or, well, lust.

"Wyatt?"

He was visibly startled, pivoting back on one foot with a stance that was nearly hostile in nature. "Oh. Lucy. You're up."

"Yeah," she answered, an eyebrow notching higher. "Don't sound so thrilled about it."

"It's just...I - "

"You weren't coming to get me?" That maybe sounded a little...presumptuous? She quickly amended it, feeling a flush threatening to scale up her neck. "I mean, you or Jiya. For the jump. We are jumping, right?"

There was a veiled bit of emotion crossing his face before he brought himself back into check, suddenly all-business in his delivery. "Jiya's been up all night. Aside from patching my arm when we got back, she's barely left the barn at all. She's been brainstorming, whittling away at - well, to be perfectly honest, I don't know what the hell she's been doing, but she thinks she has something now. A location, one in the present, for where Emma and Rufus landed."

"Really?" Excitement buzzed to the surface, the mention of Rufus invigorating her more effectively than any dose of caffeine could've accomplished. "We - okay, let me get - "

"No," he said abruptly, taking one massive step forward to place a stilling hand on her arm. "Just me and Jiya. This is a simple extraction mission, no history stuff."

She granted him a blank-faced nanosecond to shift gears, to tell her he was kidding, to give her some other job of appropriate importance, _something_. Anything that would be better than the unspoken suggestion that she was simply being left behind. "No history stuff? Do I really need to remind you of what went down all of what, maybe eight hours ago? It wasn't a PhD in Sociology that just saved your ass back at their headquarters, was it?"

"Lucy - "

"No, you - you have to know by now that I'm more than just your time travel tour guide, okay? And you were just shot _yesterday_. You need all the help you can get. You're not going without me."

"Look, I get it," he fought back with a thinly arranged attempt at calm. "But - "

"She has a point, Wyatt."

Jiya stood in passage between the main house and the barn, hip cocked to one side, her shrewd expression bolstering Lucy's confidence while simultaneously adding to the stress that lined Wyatt's shoulders.

"Not you too," he protested wearily.

"She came through big time. You told me that yourself last night. It can't hurt to have extra backup."

Lucy's chin jutted forward, determination burning brighter from within at the added support from her teammate. To think this was the same Jiya who'd unapologetically tried to ditch her before they'd ever gotten off the ground in Normandy.

Wyatt's eyes darted between them in a final act of desperation before he sighed his defeat. "Have I mentioned how much I hate it when you two gang up against me?"

"I've gotten that impression, yes."

He rolled his eyes in the face of Lucy's cheeky grin. With a glint of resigned mischief, he reached for her hip, pinching a swatch of flannel material between his fingers. "Unless you plan to storm the gates in PJs, I suggest you go get changed."

"And quickly," Jiya called out, quirking a lone brow at the pair of them before she retreated back to the barn, undoubtedly prepping the Mothership for a speedy departure.

That seemed to jar Wyatt back into motion. He released Lucy and shooed her away, returning to his task of selecting the necessary gear for the mission at hand. But in another instant she felt his eyes on her once more, surely absorbing the slight reddening of her face as she turned back toward the staircase.

She didn't understand her own internal trigger for flustered embarrassment, not when he'd so recently done a hell of a lot more than toy with the outer seam of her shapeless lounge pants. It had been what, not even two whole days since he'd torn that red dress off of her in a hurry? Two days since he'd unremittingly coaxed her to release, only to rip away every other barrier and grant her full access to a second earth-shattering frenzy of heightened feeling.

The tease of his touch now was worthy of an entirely different kind of warmth. It was somehow more dangerous than sex. His hand on her hip spoke of flirtatious intimacy, familiar and comfortable, as easy as getting back on the proverbial bike and recovering everything they'd once shared. As easy as accepting the love of a man as good as Wyatt Logan should have been all along.

There was a still a persistent live wire of anxiety that sparked through her at that thought, but this time it didn't go unchallenged. Even more surprising was the realization that its rival was the louder, more dominant force of the two; Wyatt's voice, as clear as the sonorous ring of a bell, skipped persuasively across her memory - _You and I have never been about anything but you and I_. She could practically taste the conviction in his kiss. He'd called upon her belief in fate, labeled their connection as inevitable, promised her there was no such thing as too late.

 _There's no timetable for me_. _Not when it comes to you._

Lucy still struggled to believe any of it could be true, but God did she ever _want_ to, and that was enough to spin her head around and around as she sped her way through a hasty wardrobe change. The weight of what was spoken between them before Oklahoma had been pressing down on her heart ever since. Even when she'd been knocked around and scared out of her mind in the clutches of Rittenhouse, there was still an insistent throb in her heart that kept her linked to his words, his touch, those calloused hands descending over her arms. It hadn't taken much soul searching to figure out that the fear of Emma's plan couldn't compete with Lucy's fear of never…

Never conceding the truth Wyatt needed to hear. Just as he'd suggested, she was absolutely tired of fighting against the knee-jerk reflex that would lead her straight into his arms if she would only give herself the permission to do so.

She intended to do something, _say_ something, once she was within range again, but any hint of his lighthearted teasing was long gone when she retraced her steps to the dining area. He barely even turned to look at her as he thrust a protective vest in her direction.

"Is that really - "

"Yes," he cut in flatly. "It's not up for debate."

Lucy began to shrug it on with a sigh, not sure what had brought on another shift in his temperament, but then his attention swung fully to her, his expression softened if not a little downcast. Wyatt took command, fastening her in with a deftness that stole her breath away. He hadn't laid a hand on her restraints in the Mothership, not once, mostly because she'd never allowed him the opportunity. She'd weaned herself off of _that_ act ages ago. The day had come - and then kept on coming - where Wyatt hadn't been there to assist anymore, so it was a good thing she hadn't relied too heavily on that little habit of his in the long term.

And there was the crux of her biggest, loudest issue, the one that lit the fuse on every horrible thing she'd done in the last year - she was better off not relying on _anyone_ , because they all had the tendency to disappear right when she needed them most.

"You stay behind me," Wyatt said in a low voice as his hands yanked at the closures, ensuring she was cinched in as best as possible. "You don't take any unnecessary risks. If things get dicey, your priority is Rufus, not me. Got it?"

"Rufus should be Jiya's priority. I mean, he will be anyway, right? So why - "

"Because you don't need to worry about me. I'll worry about myself."

"The hell you will," she returned with a flimsy scoff. "You'll definitely worry about all three of us, and that doesn't leave much room to worry about _you_ , now does it? Yesterday - "

"You were incredible yesterday," he said without missing a beat, "but that doesn't suddenly make you an ice-in-the-veins sharpshooter, Lucy. All I'm asking is for you to let me go in focused, okay? Because it's...it's not so great for any of us if I'm doing this with a five-alarm fire of anxiety in the back of my head just because I can't trust you to follow orders."

She felt a flutter of guilt at the biting accuracy in his words. "Well when you put it like that…"

There was one final tug to her vest that almost had her colliding into his torso, but he stopped her up short, hands bracing her around the middle. "We are leaving that hellhole as one solid unit. You, me, Jiya, Rufus. That's my only concern. Nothing is more important than that. Do you understand?"

It felt as if all the willpower in the world could not break her gaze from the quicksand of apprehension in his eyes. Her voice was nothing more than a weak murmur, seeping out of her as if he'd conjured her agreement with some sort of supernatural force. "I understand."

He was going to kiss her. She felt it rushing along her veins, saw it darkening his blue eyes. There were already so close, his hands still held her in place, and -

And he left her disappointed, dropping his gaze and hands in unison, feet shuffling off on a path to the time machine. "We better go before Jiya starts huffing and puffing this place to the ground."

"An image I'm sure she'd appreciate," Lucy responded vacantly.

He took another step away from her with a stark grin that didn't quite hit the rest of his face. "I'd like to think she's self-aware enough to admit a passing resemblance."

Lucy followed after him in silence, not bothering to keep the joke running. She avoided looking at him as they climbed the steps and took their respective seats, feeling far too engulfed in her own medley of mixed-up emotions to risk adding his perspective to the fray. He left her to her own thoughts for as long as it took Jiya to propel their collective energy from Point A to Point B, which really only amounted to a small assembly of seconds. It was then that she felt him pressing forward, cool metal driven into her palm as he angled himself into her field of vision. "Just in case."

She nodded, grasping the gun between fingers that wished to shrivel away from the same responsibility she'd just fought for; to have it there, wedged in her clammy grip for the second time in a short span of mere hours, meant an acknowledgement of how awful it had felt to actually use it even when she had no other options. It was far easier to be cavalier about the whole experience when it was an argument of hypotheticals. The shock of having it in her possession again brought a tacit severity that backed up Wyatt's aversion to her coming along for the ride. This wasn't a damn field trip. They were right back in the thick of Rittenhouse territory, a cruel and friendless domain that had once held Lucy against her will for six agonizing weeks. It was no wonder he took zero pleasure in purposely bringing her straight into the belly of that beast.

Wyatt practically hit the ground running once Jiya gave the word. Lucy wanted to shout after him with a plea that he please, _please_ be careful. The instinct was so emphatic upon her lips that she literally had to bite down to keep herself quiet. Given the ease with which he hurtled himself out of the time machine and began his meticulous scan of their surroundings, she couldn't deny his ability to power through yesterday's bullet to arm like it was nothing, but that wasn't the source of her gnawing concern. It was the odds of getting through another raid without suffering something far worse, however, that felt steeped in insurmountable stakes.

He twisted back after several harrowing seconds, his shoulders tensed for action. "It's clear."

Jiya slid down first, leaving Lucy to make an awkward exit with that damn gun burning a hole in one hand. Wyatt stopped her with a hand to her elbow once she found her footing, his voice pitched devastatingly low. "I changed my mind. You have a different job now."

From how she remembered it, she had no job other than to play his shadow, but that entire conversation felt like a clouded dream by now. Wyatt gestured behind her, redirecting her attention to the side-by-side machines, two Motherships lodged so close together that they almost touched.

"Tear theirs up."

"But - " she sputtered, regrouping as fast as she could. "Shouldn't Jiya be the one who...I don't know how - "

"You already said it best - Jiya won't be sidelined by anything that isn't Rufus." At her doubtful look, Wyatt came a half-step closer, narrowing her wide-eyed distress down to nothing but his steadfast gaze. "There's no need to overthink it, okay? Just go apeshit on anything that looks important. You've spent enough time in those damn machines to understand the basics."

She couldn't argue with that logic, but the suggestion that she let him out of her sight felt like a fatal blow to her lungs. "Wyatt - "

He squeezed her elbow, his face set firmly. "You wanted to be useful, right? This is me, totally at odds with myself, trying my best to stifle the urge to treat you like you need a babysitter. Take it, Lucy. We need this."

With a directive as painfully honest as that one, there was no room for opposition. "Be safe, okay? Please."

The break in her voice produced a matching crack that ran right down the center of his stoic expression. "Same to you, ma'am. Keep an eye out for trouble, alright?"

She wanted to hug him, to throw her arms around his neck and fling herself into the repetition of a moment that had basically been the exact reverse of this one - the moment he'd fallen out of the sky in the midst of Rittenhouse hell and cut her loose from her imprisonment.

But he was fading from view before she could spur herself into action. If that grin of his was supposed to inspire confidence, he was in for a massive reality check, because all she saw was the torture of his worst nightmare wringing from every tightly-drawn muscle in his body. He hated this. He was having to drag himself away. She understood, because with every additional footstep he put between them, she felt that same sting of dismay kindling inside of her too.

Lucy hauled herself up over the lip of the enemy time machine once Wyatt and Jiya were out of view, and - thank God - the gun in her hand had an entirely different gravity to it now. _Go_ _apeshit_. That had been his advice. It wasn't a term she'd been overly fond of before, but _before_ felt like an entirely different lifetime these days. There was an edge to Wyatt's colorfully worded instruction that struck against every bit of resentment she held for Emma, for Rittenhouse, for that enormous cavity in her chest that had come at their hands. The very legacy that her mother had once tried to gift wrap for Lucy was about to get shot to pieces with her own pull of the trigger.

Maybe she liked this plan more than she'd originally anticipated.

Destroying an exact replica of the machine that had saved her life - or at the very least, offered an incredibly efficient mode of transportation - on a near daily basis should have felt the slightest bit wrong, but with her eyes trained steadily on the glowing panel of controls, there was nothing but a swell of detached anger rising through her. The gun's safety came off as if acting of its own volition. Even with a silencer masking the howl of her first shot, Lucy heard it like an impending avalanche. Muffled destruction, a building fury that nature itself could not contain.

So she shot again. And again. Shot until the lights dimmed, went black, ceased to function. She put several holes through the monitors, took a crack at the levers, drove a pointless bullet through the head of the pilot's chair as if Emma was there to take the brunt of it. Steam was pouring off the console, accompanied by a nervous short-circuiting crackle. This piece of shit device had ruthlessly aided in the utter annihilation of everything she'd ever held dear; the head rush she felt at watching it officially meet its end was unparalleled.

Only one sound could break through the bustle of her spiking enthusiasm, and even then, the noise was almost all the way up on her before Lucy registered its presence.

Footsteps. Many of them, coming quickly. _Shit_.

She had no idea how many bullets she had left, and the self-indulgent shot into a damn _chair_ of all things was suddenly feeling like the worst idea she'd ever had.

One deep breath. That was what she granted herself. One very deep breath, and then she was firing whatever this gun had left for the sake of her life. It came as some surprise that she actually very much wanted that life, wanted a chance to make something - _anything_ \- right with Wyatt. She wanted to throw her arms around Rufus, wanted a single day to laugh at all his worst jokes, to binge bad TV with him and Jiya. And oh god, she just wanted to be Jiya's friend again so, so badly. Not her teammate, not a means to an end, but an honest-to-God _friend_.

Her one deep breath had turned into at least three, but to her immense relief, the life she'd just dreamt of wasn't under attack.

" _Lucy_! Lucy, let's go!"

Her knees threatened to fail her, but she locked down the impulse to crumble. With two quaking steps, she was at the opening of the time machine. Three of her teammates rushed toward her. _Three_ of them. She wanted to weep at the sight.

Wyatt was directly in front of her in another blink of her disbelieving eyes. He had her by the waist, plucked her right out of one Mothership and turned her in the direction of the other, never once letting his hands drop away from her completely as she continued to gape at Rufus.

Unharmed. The same. _Rufus_.

Not that there was any such thing as 'same' after a few weeks in Rittenhouse isolation, but that stipulation was so exceedingly secondary when he was right there, climbing into the time machine a half-step behind Jiya, aiming a tremulous smile back at Lucy when he caught her staring.

The impact of that smile made her dizzy. The expectation of this very moment was everything she'd worked for, the sole reason she'd allowed herself to get swept up in another plundering chase through time. Seeing him returned to the team, safe and whole, was the catalyst for every terrible twist and turn, every self-destructive error in judgment, every misstep. To know it had been for something, that the fight hadn't been wasted, and now...now she was off the hook...

Wyatt was all that kept her standing. He was also what kept her moving. Before she knew it, he was hoisting her higher, lifting her straight in after Rufus with one fluid glide of his arms. Just as it occurred to Lucy that she should be giving him hell for needlessly abusing his injured arm like that, she was immediately distracted by Rufus catching her hand in both of his, yanking her in for a hug that swallowed her right up.

"'Bout time, Lucy," he laughed giddily against the top of her head.

She was sniffling out a reply before she'd even realized there were tears involved. "You're telling me."

Wyatt was behind her again, his hand landing low on her back and voice ringing close to her ear, clearly reeling a bit himself as he attempted to bring some common sense to the table. "As much as I love you both, can we save this reunion for after Jiya drops us anywhere but here?"

"You hear that, Lucy?" Rufus asked with a provoking wag of his eyebrows. "He loves us _both_."

An onslaught of hectic emotions seemed to swarm her from all sides at the inherent Rufus-ness of that loaded quip, but she forged ahead as if none of it affected her. "That surprises you? He's always been a softy for this miserable team of civilians they inflicted upon him."

Rufus laughed about as heartily as a prisoner of several weeks had any right to laugh. One glance at Wyatt as she wilted into her seat and Lucy was pleased to see that he wasn't even trying to deny it. There was a slight bashfulness spreading over the planes of his face, but his shrug offered no resistance. A softy through and through.

Jiya pivoted in her chair and pinned her gaze to Rufus, posing a question to all of her passengers while only having eyes for one. "Everyone ready to go?"

She was met with a chorus of yeses. The team was whole again.

* * *

 _a/n: For reasons I imagine you can discern, this fic is hitting its last leg. I very much appreciate your feedback in the homestretch :)_


	16. To Italy

_a/n: I wrote part of this chapter about a hundred years ago (slight exaggeration), and so you may recognize one of the post-S2 TFP prompts hidden away in the back half of this update. I had initially hoped that even if I didn't make the deadline for that month - HA, good one, I know - that the contest would re-extend some of the prompts from prior months as was often the case. Sadly TFP ended for good a little while ago, but I would be absolutely negligent if I didn't give proper credit now that I'm posting a snippet of dialogue that originated there! TFP was a huge part of my Timeless fandom experience & there's never a bad time to say THANK YOU to all who were involved in running those challenges :)_

 _Happy Reading!_

* * *

To witness a warring conflict overtaking Lucy's face was nothing new to Wyatt, but _this_ conflict was far more welcomed than anything he'd seen for quite some time. She was alight with energy, practically radiating joy every time she looked at Rufus from across the table, but her desire for answers - for resolution, if he had to put a real label on it - kept getting in the way of her ability to bask in the excitement of a long-awaited reunion. It was facts versus feelings, the eternal standoff waged once more.

"How did you guys - tell me this wasn't too easy. It feels too easy."

"You think _anything_ about the last several weeks have been easy?" Jiya asked with a smirk.

"No, but - " Lucy paused, eyes darting to Rufus again, a smile tugging at her lips. "No. Not easy at all. But I still thought...honestly, I thought I was a goner in there. I thought we were _all_ goners in there."

"Glad to know you have such faith in us," Jiya teased, leaning forward to liberally top off every glass on the table.

"It's not you guys," Lucy answered quietly. "It's…"

 _Everything_ , Wyatt thought. She'd lost faith in just about everything.

Rufus jumped in where Lucy had trailed off, his eagerness to tell the story coming across loud and clear, which created a hitch of recognition in Wyatt's chest - a happy, delirious, satisfied hitch. "Emma was a nasty bleeding mess after you guys made a crash landing at their last location. Seriously, she got blood _all over_ the time machine. It was frickin' disgusting, and guess who had to clean it up in her absence? This guy. So thanks for that."

Lucy blanched, but the curiosity in her eyes prevailed. "In her absence? Where did she go?"

"A hospital, if she wanted to live," Rufus said with a wily grin. "Not that anyone informed me, of course. But she peaced out as soon as we landed, leaving two of her only remaining idiots to keep me in line."

"Two idiots that Wyatt personally allowed me to dispose of," Jiya inserted a little too enthusiastically.

Rufus chimed in before Wyatt could insert his own line of concern. "You know, you actually scare me when you say things like that."

She nuzzled her face to his, the brightness of her smile remaining in spite of the message he'd delivered. "You're just scared to know your girlfriend could give you the ass kicking of a lifetime if she wanted to."

"I feel pretty secure in knowing that she won't want to for a while." He snuggled her in closer, both arms folding her into his embrace. "I plan to ride this you-were-kidnapped-and-could-have-died wave for as long as possible."

There was a lazy smack to his chest for that comment, but from the fraction of Jiya's face that was still visible, Wyatt knew his friend was right - he'd be free of the doghouse for quite some time.

Lucy reached for her glass, hesitancy marking her features as she traced a nail up and down the stem before lifting it to her mouth. Her next question still burned in her gaze after a few long gulps, not that he was watching too closely with an arm that ached to pull her in as tightly as Rufus currently held Jiya. His other arm ached too, but that was the consequence of already holding onto her too tightly on day one of recuperating from a gunshot to the bicep. Given the same opportunity again, he couldn't say he'd choose any differently.

Rufus nodded at her, another full grin flashing over his face before he prodded her to speak. "Just ask. I can tell you want to."

"Ask what," she said coyly.

"I don't know," he returned with a bark of a laugh. "But you practically have question marks in your eyes and I can handle it, so go ahead."

There was another lift of her glass, her sparkling remedy of a drink drained away in a slow swallow. "Why? Why did they need you, why - why keep you..."

"Keep me alive?" His enjoyment dimmed, but even as his expression sobered, he never once lost the traces of a grin. "You guys aren't going to believe this, except you also totally, totally will."

Jiya straightened, clearly caught off guard by that paradox of an answer. "Meaning?"

"So the Mothership that Lucy just put an end to - cheers, by the way - "

They all knocked glasses in celebration, except Wyatt's sip was just that - a sip. The other three were guzzling fast and hard, and as much as he'd love to join in their revelry, some nameless reluctance kept him from indulging at the same breakneck pace.

" _That_ Mothership had to come from somewhere, right?" Rufus said, picking right back up where he'd left off once his mouth was free. "So get this. Our version of Emma - the one who didn't come back from 1779 because we took her ass down then too - "

"Cheers!"

Rufus stopped mid-sentence at Jiya's call, tossing back another gulp before starting again. "Yeah, that Emma was killing time for a few years until she could catch up with a _former_ Emma, one who was busy planting a sleeper agent in Alabama. And you know those Emmas, man. They're not an agreeable bunch, and the time machine took the brunt of their...differing opinions."

Wyatt felt his jaw working loose, head hammering at the obvious implication. "I'm sorry, _what_? You're saying… Emma fought _herself_? And messed up the time machine while she was at it?"

"That is exactly what I'm saying."

Jiya began refilling glasses with a snickering laugh while Lucy and Wyatt both sat frozen, dumbfounded. "For every redheaded bitch action…"

"...there is an equal and opposite redheaded bitch reaction," Rufus nodded in agreement.

Wyatt ignored the nerdy science-babble, his brain still stuck on the idea of two versions of Emma allowing a singularly purposed mission to get clouded by one jointly unfathomable ego. "I still say you're shitting us."

"Nope. The Mothership barely got back to the present, and while Emma of 1779 was capable of doing a temporary patch job, there was no way that thing would have held together much longer without a serious overhaul. Doesn't help that the damn she-devil was several years out of practice by the time she got back to our century. I kept stalling every chance I got, telling her there was no permanent fix possible when she was insistent on taking it out ASAP, which meant I was kept on retainer for maintenance. Oh, and I was given the great privilege of serving as her backup pilot if she needed me in a pinch."

"Like a Wyatt-gunning-her-down-from-the-ceiling kind of pinch?" Jiya asked blithely.

"Just like that," Rufus chuckled, eyes shining. "To Wyatt!"

He shook his head at the three of them raising their glasses in his honor, and as Lucy echoed the sentiment with a thickly spoken "to Wyatt" of her own, her shoulder came to rest against his. The pleasant warmth of her was better than anything they could put in his cup, transcending any increasingly sloppy toast his friends could propose. He didn't dare breathe too hard for fear of breaking the spell and sending her off like one of those fizzy bubbles dancing to the surface of her drink.

"And to Italy," Jiya added a beat later, her glass swinging back to the middle of the table.

Lucy was partaking blindly, the words themselves not catching up to her until after she'd swallowed another mouthful. "Wait, what? Italy? Are we - we're in Italy?!"

A streak of guilt raced over Jiya's face, her eyes sliding to Wyatt's as she sought approval. "We can tell her now, can't we?"

His throat went unpardonably dry, chest tightening, an old trigger of panic taking hold. Or maybe it was a new one. An omen of the heartbreak yet to come. "I don't see why not."

"Oh my god, Italy? You guys are serious?"

They were absolutely serious. Northern Italy, the Lombardy region to be specific. They'd landed at the one safe house Jiya had refused to utilize up until now, not that Wyatt blamed her. It was far more than a safe house, after all. This place had no affiliation with Homeland or the military, wasn't on the radar for any branch of U.S. Government. It was a hell of a lot more personal than that, the equivalent of sacred ground that could finally be reclaimed.

"We own this place, Jiya and I," Rufus answered proudly. "Our own villa, courtesy of the big fat check Agent Christopher sent our way after we were dismissed from duty."

Wyatt watched as Lucy cast a glance up to the heavy exposed beams that spanned the ceiling, then across the weathered stone inset of the wall opposite them, a new awareness flushing through her as the details came together in her mind.

"C'mon, our guest obviously needs a tour." Rufus kept a hand threaded through Jiya's, towing her with him as he lumbered to his feet.

"Uh, yes please!"

Lucy stood with her hands clapped together in anticipation, and Wyatt looked on in awe as the strain of the last several weeks thawed away to nothing. Lucy was... _Lucy_. And if that wasn't enough, Jiya was also Jiya, smiling and joking and actually putting an arm around Lucy's shoulders to pull her along as she rounded the table.

And that left Wyatt, the odd man out, too trapped in his own head to fall victim to the heady dose of high spirits that captivated the rest of his team. Winning...winning had never felt this heavy before, and it required very little self-examination to root out the source of his melancholy. Getting Rufus back had been his first objective, the primary goal from their very first strategy session, but this victory came with a hefty counterbalance. With Rufus found, it was only a matter of time before Lucy was lost again. That had been the deal. She'd fired it off in a tone that begged no question, then repeated it as often as she decided he needed to hear it - she was in this for Rufus and nothing else.

"You coming, man?"

He shook his head slowly, working to keep his face untroubled as he waved Rufus off. "You guys go ahead. I'll catch up."

That caught Lucy's attention, stopping her in her tracks and turning her head to regard him searchingly, but then Rufus was handing her the wine she'd left behind and nudging her forward. The moment passed, the tour began, and Wyatt was certain that some vital part of himself had gone down the hall with them, leaving a thunderous void that would remain uninhabited in their absence.

It was Jiya who hung back to challenge him, and thank God he had his ass firmly planted in a chair, because the words she let fly were about as predictable as a snowstorm in the middle of a Texas summer. "Don't tell me you're giving up on her now."

He squirmed in his seat, feeling like a bug under a microscope at her intense gaze. "I thought - since when do you - "

"Look, I know I've had my doubts, but…" she glanced sideways, her eyes filling at the sight of Rufus and Lucy pointing at some painting with an animation that spoke to the quick effect of the drinks in their hands. "All I'm saying is that sometimes the best things we have are worth fighting for."

"But I - "

"You already know that. You've _been_ fighting. It's Lucy who needs to start battling it out with herself, but...maybe this is the alcohol talking, but I think she's there, Wyatt. I think she's ready."

His eyes skirted past her, stubborn in their pursuit of anything but her sharp scrutiny. "Someone should probably cut you off. You're talking crazy now, Marri."

"Whatever, Logan." She ruffled a hand over the top of his head and took off for the rest of her party, tossing a final conclusive remark over her shoulder as she went. "Just...try not to get in your own way, okay?"

He had no idea what he was supposed to do with that. He wasn't trying to get in his own way, but he also wasn't willing to get in Lucy's way. Not when she'd made it painfully clear that the wounds of the last several years had left such a profound scar on her heart. If they ever had a second chance, or hell - a third, fourth, whatever they were up to - it would have to be her decision. He wasn't begging, wasn't launching some last-ditch effort, wasn't wheedling his way into a place he didn't belong. There was no one-off, no fleeting spark, no offer for something that would live and die in the space of a single night, that could interest him now. Rebounding from having her without really having anything at all was getting harder and harder every time. If she crawled into his bed again just to leave him behind forever, he wasn't sure there could be another shot at this.

Before he'd lost her in Oklahoma, he'd been so sure they were inescapably doomed to come back to each other again and again; at the moment, the only thing that felt inescapable were the imaginary hands around his neck, cutting off his air supply with an ever-increasing vice of pressure.

The resounding thrill of her laughter echoed from deeper within the house, the sturdy walls carrying that tiny fragment back to Wyatt's ears as he sat there studying a drink he wasn't able to stomach. Tonight was a lost cause. Tomorrow...tomorrow he'd find a way to let her go if that was really what she wanted.

God, just thinking about it was like having a knife driven straight through his chest.

Wyatt drew himself up on creaky legs. His arm hurt. His head hurt. His actual heart might very well cease to function next, and he had no defense against it. Five months in his grandpa's old cabin had given him the space he needed to make sense of the last few years. He'd painstakingly untangled one mindfuck after another - time travel, Rittenhouse, Lucy, Jessica, the baby that had likely never existed, all of it. Sorting through the jagged remnants of so much loss and confusion had been a hell of a task, but in the end, he'd come out better. Stronger. Ready for the break in his bad luck streak, the unfolding of a path that had to bring him back to Lucy one way or another. If that path had failed him, there would be no such cure this time, no cabin on earth that could provide refuge when she inevitably made her exit.

As if conjured by his own wistful imagination, Lucy somehow sprang up between doorways as Wyatt wandered off in search of a spare bedroom, empty-handed and closing in on him rapidly.

"Why the long face, soldier?"

"What long face?" he volleyed back with a lukewarm smirk.

She listed a little sideways as she shook her head. She had an index finger pressed against the dimple in his cheek before he could dodge her, too shocked by the lightning-strike of her touch to even consider batting her away now.

"This," she murmured as she wriggled her finger around in that same dip of his skin, "does not fool me."

Her breath was too sweet with wine or champagne or whatever the hell Jiya had broken open, and it lured him forward, as compelling as mouthwatering bait on a flashy hook. "There's no getting anything past you, huh, ma'am?"

"Tell me why you're sad. Rufus is safe."

A boom of a laugh drifted down the hall right on cue, a sure sign of their teammate's freewheeling vitality. Wyatt smiled at the sound of it while trying to shake her finger off of his face, but Lucy just dug in a little harder at his effort. "I'm very happy about Rufus."

"Then you're very sad about something else."

The childlike simplicity behind her every word was incredibly disarming. It made him wish for a million more moments like this, moments where she'd had just enough to drink to warrant a finger on his cheek and a careless glimmer in her whirlpool eyes. Moments where she could afford to be mellowed by the influence of alcohol, uninhibited to touch him and tease him without the pressing fear of collateral damage paralyzing her every move. What a shame that it was a one-night-only kind of marvel; a comet in his dark sky, a breathtaking flash that would have to last him a lifetime.

"Tell me," she whined from alarmingly close to his mouth, "or I'll find a way to make you tell me anyway."

Oh, _hell_.

No, not hell, because hell itself couldn't compete with the fire she was igniting inside of him. She was going to make this impossible, wasn't she?

"How about - " his voice cracked, a defect that had Lucy grinning slyly, "- how about I'll tell you tomorrow when you're sober enough to remember it?"

" _Wyatt_. I'm not drunk. I'm tipsy. There's a difference." He stole a careful step backwards and tried to negotiate that point, but she trailed right after him with a hum of disapproval, shifting her hand to cup his cheek. "You're being difficult. Quit being difficult."

"What exactly is the problem?" he asked with a bit of an impish taunt scraping up from deep within.

"You're still talking."

With that she molded her mouth to his, apparently proving good on her threat of making him talk. Or making him kiss. Somehow those two aims seemed to go hand in hand for her at the moment, and he wasn't really of a mind to complain about that sketchy logic.

Wyatt fitted his hands to her hips and leaned in, absorbing the warmth of her skin through the thin cotton top, unashamedly rustling it up between his fingers until he could feel her against his palms. He was being a greedy bastard and he knew it, but this was it - the best goodbye he could hope for, the only proper farewell she'd likely be granting him, mostly because she had no idea that's what it would be.

She made a noise against his lips, one that beckoned him even further into her. Her hands scraped through his hair, forging a heedless path as the length of her body snaked against his and pinned him to the wall, summoning a groan he couldn't bite back.

" _Jesus_ , Lucy."

Her face tilted back, eyes still closed as a broad smile spread over her mouth. "Are you less sad now?"

More so, actually. Devastated, in fact, mourning the loss of her before she was even gone.

But he wasn't saying any of that, not now. His forehead met hers, lips close enough to brush lightly to hers as he delivered his answer. "Like anyone could kiss you and feel sad."

"Good answer." She locked in on him again, instigating a hazy grinning kiss that dragged him right into her happy little buzz.

It wouldn't take much more to send the safeguard of his better judgment plummeting out of reach. He ended the kiss with a reluctant hum, still holding fast to her waist as he shrank away. "I think this is where I call it a night, Luce."

"Really? Because I was just getting started."

Wyatt nearly groaned again at the promise of every illicit fantasy that already ran rampant through his head. "I'm not starting anything with you when you're letting the booze do the talking."

"I bet you wouldn't be saying that if we were in Texas."

"What?"

She blinked up at him, the taunting curl of her grin diffusing directly into his bloodstream. "You never say no in Texas. Texas puts you in the mood."

Wyatt stared at her for a beat, taking several speechless seconds to process the absurd correlation she'd made until his confusion dropped away and laughter took its place. "My god, Lucy, Texas has nothing to do with it."

"Recent evidence suggests otherwise. Make it happen a third time and I think I'd have an academic thesis on my hands."

One more. That was what he told himself as he bumped his nose against her cheek. After a string of sentences like that, he owed her at least one more. She eagerly met his kiss stride for stride, and Wyatt bottled it all up in the reserve of his heart, the texture and taste of her, each ricochet of his body's synapses as they went off again and again. He flipped her around and ground his hips to hers until he had her shivering and breathless. One last time. It might be all he had left of her come morning.

"Let the record show," he grunted into her neck, sure that the distinct swell of his jeans was communicating just fine without the addition of actual words, "that I want you all the same in any state, any country. Any continent."

Her eyes were dazzling, nearly black, as he left her propped there, practically vibrating with desire and stunned into silence.

"Tomorrow," he vowed softly, committing every bit of her willowy figure to memory just as she was in this moment - lips parted, face aglow, wobbly-kneed. Perfect. "We'll talk tomorrow."


	17. One Ground Rule

_a/n: I am notoriously awful at finding a real ending to a story like this one, sooo consider this part 1 of the conclusion because I got carried away as per the usual. One chapter to go after this!_

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The events of yesterday were still shrouded in fuzzy clouds when Lucy stepped beneath the spray of the showerhead the next morning, relying on the reviving drive of hot water to bring it all back in pieces. Rufus was where he belonged, Emma on the run, Italy - they'd spent the night in _Italy_ , and...and her body pressing Wyatt to a wall. Wyatt then returning the favor like a force of nature breaking over her, overwhelming, incessant, mesmerizing.

Until he'd left her there to stumble to bed on her own. _Tomorrow_. There was something he was going to tell her tomorrow, which was now today.

She wasn't sure if that realization was cause for rushing through the motions of getting showered and dressed, or if she should actually delay the process as much as possible, because the heavy curtain of alcohol was distorting the entire interaction, making it impossible to recall if there had really been an ominous current beneath his words, or… Or had that been manufactured on her end?

If she was placing a bet, ominous only felt right. It was her and Wyatt, after all. They were well beyond the point of running out of rope, weren't they?

The kitchen was empty when she tiptoed in, hair blown dry and clothes carefully arranged in her best imitation of readiness for - for whatever the hell he had up his sleeve. There was a small spread on the counter, an eye catching arrangement of what looked to be freshly baked bread and fruit that may have come straight from the vine. If that wasn't enough to get her mouth watering, the rich blast of espresso that came blowing in from behind her did the rest of the work.

"You're just in time."

She turned to meet Wyatt's tentative smile with wide eyes, blankly accepting the paper cup he extended to her. "Uh, wow this...I mean, this is - "

"No big deal," he said with a shake of his head. "Thank Italy, not me."

"It's no pancake breakfast, of course…"

Wyatt's reaction was immediate. "I know. Trust me, I tried to scrounge up the stuff for pancakes, but this kitchen is far from fully stocked and - "

"I was kidding," Lucy cut in about as quickly as she could overcome her shock. "You have to know I was kidding. God, Wyatt, look around. This is amazing."

He did the exact opposite of what she'd suggested, eyes falling to examine the tile floor instead. "You really like those pancakes, though."

Okay, now he was just being too damn weird. This was no poor excuse of a backup plan, a thought Lucy tried to express with a gentle prod of his elbow and a jostling grin, but his response was lackluster.

They ate in stilted silence, broken up only by the occasional request to pass a dish or utensil, or even worse, to make a trivial comment about the weather. She racked her brain for some bookend to the conversation they'd had last night, a crucial piece of information that would shed light on his quiet upheaval, but there was nothing. They'd...well, they'd kissed and teased and kissed some more, and just when it seemed like they were headed for something more, he'd taken the high road and shelved it for another time.

Just as she was working up the nerve to shake some clarity out of him, Wyatt stood and nodded at the back door. "Wanna go for a walk?"

Lucy glanced around, waiting for some sound or signal of Rufus or Jiya coming to join them, but the villa didn't yield a single noise above the brash noise of her heartbeat. "Yeah, um...yeah. Why not?"

She could easily answer that question for herself - because his current demeanor was scaring the hell out of her, and going anywhere alone with him right now was probably a sure path to some sort of internal disaster - but she chose to stifle that thought anyway. Sooner or later, she had to face this. Had to face him. Or else…

Or else she might throw another year of her life away in a town where she could cruelly exile herself from everything and everyone who mattered.

Each step they took had her less and less sure of their destination. There _was_ an actual destination, of that she was certain. This was no happy-go-lucky stroll in the park. Wyatt marched her through a postage stamp of a village with enough precision and formality to make it clear that he had a specific objective in mind, and if the hard line of his jaw was any kind of sign, Lucy wondered if she was headed for the gallows.

But when the thick tread of his boots finally came to an abrupt stop, it wasn't gallows that awaited her. It was a train station.

"I didn't just go out to buy breakfast this morning," he said as he lead her through the open-air entrance. "I - I got you this."

A ticket. He bought her a train ticket. He...he -

"What…" Lucy swallowed, but the action had little effect. "What about Emma?"

"Jiya put an APB out on her as soon as we landed last night. For how bad off she must've been, it wouldn't surprise me if she was already in custody by now. We really didn't leave her in any shape to run this time, right?"

She opened her mouth, fully intending to rally some sort of comment or reply from the numb void of her brain, but there was only a half-formed sound, pathetically insufficient.

Where she faltered, Wyatt had no issue charging head-on, undeterred by her vacant response. "I heard you in Houston, Lucy. I _listened_. You wanted a clean break from this whole thing and I ruined that for you. I manipulated you into doing this, so...this is my apology. I'm fixing it. Let me fix it."

The sheen of desperation in his eyes made her insides go tumbling together like a flop of wet clothes in a washing machine. "But this - it's not over, Wyatt. Rittenhouse...they're not - "

"You're off the hook, right? Rufus is safe, so go. We can handle the rest." He traced the back of her hand slowly, turning it over to crumple an envelope - along with that damn ticket - into her palm. "There's enough money there to get you back to Normandy. A little extra in case you choose to start over somewhere else. This train will take you into Milan, and from Milan you can go just about anywhere. Just...tell me where you end up and I - I'll be sure the rest of your stuff gets there."

Lucy shook her head, rendered stupidly speechless. _Off the hook_. That exact phrase had bounced through her head just yesterday, hadn't it? But even then, in her own mind, the thought hadn't put down a single root.

Her gaze roved out over the web of train tracks offering a million different stories, an unfurled atlas of places and people, tastes and sounds. All hers. Another few steps toward that platform and it was a world of sunlight and possibility. _Possibilities_ that wouldn't include Wyatt anymore.

"This is yours too." He pressed a cheap prepaid cell phone into her other hand. "I know there's a chance that whatever's left of Rittenhouse will try to find you once they realize you're off the team, so I want you to have this just in case. Obviously my cell reception is a little dodgy depending on...you know, if I end up back in that whole space-time loop thing for whatever reason, but the second I'm home again, I'll be checking my messages immediately. Every single time, okay?"

"Wyatt - "

"I programmed my number in there. I put a second one in too, because if something happens to me, I want to be sure you've got a backup plan. He's a buddy of mine from Special Forces, the only guy who really knows what I've been up to these days, and you can trust him to get you out of a scrape. I figured that was better than pulling Agent Christopher off of her furlough or dragging Flynn back into this mess when he has a family to lose now."

It was hard for Lucy to process anything he said beyond the point of _if something happens to me_ , and her inner panic must have flashed like neon across her face, because Wyatt was suddenly leaning much closer and running a hand over her arm.

"Hey, it's okay. I have a feeling that the rest of Rittenhouse is crumbling as we speak, and I don't plan on you needing that second number any time soon. It's just a precaution." He hovered there for a moment, swallowed harshly, then brushed his lips over her forehead in a quick swipe of a kiss - practically nonexistent, over before it could truly begin. "I'd tell you to take care of yourself, but I think we both know you'll be just fine."

He was already dissolving into the crowd. She barely knew it for how blurred her vision was, heavy with a thunderstorm of tears, but that was his back barrelling away from her. Those were his balled up fists bulldozing into the pockets of his jacket. He was letting her go, admitting defeat at long last.

The first canopy of tears were falling as Lucy glanced down at her means of escape. Money, the ticket, a phone.

A wad of paper, a hunk of plastic.

The fading sting of his mouth near her temple.

Those were his goodbyes.

For God only knows what reason, she stabbed a thumb over the power button on the phone - a phone that was as stark and spartan as they came, a pitiful downgrade to the smartphone she'd discarded so long ago, but this one came without strings. No setup, no records, no footprint that led back to her. It fit in just right with the lifestyle she'd chosen for herself.

The screen lit up with an insultingly cheery chime. As promised, there were exactly two contacts ready at her beck and call. _Wyatt_. No last name, no schmaltzy nicknames. Just Wyatt. Nothing else needed to be said. There was only one of him, after all.

Listed right there with it?

Dave Baumgardner.

She knew that name. Master Sergeant David Baumgardner. Wyatt's replacement after he'd been carted away by a bevy of Homeland agents in a furious uproar of heartbreak. It was an echo of another "ma'am," one that rang untrue because it came from a voice that had no business calling her by that stupidly antiquated term.

But that - no. Just no. He was…

He was dead. Shot, gone, left to rot in '27, never to be seen in his own timeline again.

 _What the hell_?

Her thumb was moving before her brain could give it a proper green light. The phone was at her ear as her pulse howled over the sounds of commuters and tourists alike.

"Lucy?"

"I - I'm not in any danger."

"Yeah, I can see that."

"You - " she searched through a veil of tears, inhaling a hard breath when she found him several yards off, slanted heavily against the railing, " - you, uh, didn't get too far."

"Some things are easier said than done. Walking away from you is on the top of that list."

"Could've fooled me. You practically sprinted away before I could say a word."

His snort was cluttered with something that sounded like shame. "Sorry about that. I was under the assumption that crying in front of you would've qualified as an emotional power grab."

The slump of his shoulders wrecked her even from a distance. "Wyatt…"

"Why'd you call, Lucy?"

She pinched the bridge of her nose and sniffled once, accomplishing absolutely nothing. "Dave Baumgardner is dead."

A beat of silence went by, burdened further by the subtle shake of his head silhouetted from afar.

"God, seriously? You really weren't supposed to start going through that phone two seconds after I left."

"A dead man is your idea of a backup plan? Forgive me for not feeling overly grateful."

Was it her imagination, or could she actually see his self-satisfied smirk from here?

"Believe it or not, Bam Bam is as alive as you are. He's my ace in the hole."

"But - "

"I know. Paris. 1927, right? I convinced Jiya to take me there as our first test run of the newly restored Mothership. Gave her the same reason as what I just told you - he was my plan B in case this whole thing went belly up before I could get to Rufus. He already had the clearances, so why not? What I didn't tell her is that I _also_ needed to remove at least one damn notch from my ever-growing list of fucked up regrets."

"That's not - you couldn't have...I would know if you were there. It would have changed for me too. I'd remember."

He was on his way back to her. Or maybe he wasn't. It was only one small step in her direction, probably nothing but a reflex, but she saw it and she matched it.

And with just one step toward him, there was another and another and another.

None of this made sense without him. Hell, none of it made sense _with_ him either, but there was something to be said about the way she felt a little more tethered to the earth whenever he was near.

Lucy ended the call, head shaking rapidly, her voice wobbling as she spoke into the last few feet that remained between them. "You weren't there. You were locked up in a black site. You - "

"The jackass who made you complicit in his harebrained scheme to steal a time machine was still very much locked up in that black site. The slightly older and not much wiser jackass who was less than two weeks out from boarding a plane to turn over all of Europe if that's what it took to find you…? Yeah, he's still a little partial to harebrained schemes. Stalking you across Paris in '27 was one of my better ideas, though." He smiled, searing pain still evident in his wet eyes, but there was so much sincerity shining through the misery. "You made a hell of a flapper, Luce. Had me suspecting that Bam wasn't quite keeping his eyes in his head when he took that bullet like a damn rookie."

"I don't - " her whisper caught in her throat, urging Wyatt forward until he could usher her into a quieter alcove, and his light hold on her shoulders splintered the last of her resolve. She was reaching for him as soon as he brought them to a stop, her hands pressing insistently to his chest as confusion bubbled through her. "What did you do? How - how didn't I - I never saw you…"

Wyatt's hands closed over hers, locking her in place against him. "I waited till I could get him alone. Told him what would happen if he didn't change things and made him take my gun so he'd be better prepared, all while begging him not to breathe a word of it to either of you."

"But he - he still died."

"Not so much," he answered softly. "I read the original debrief, you know. He was shot in an alley the first time around, but the way you remember it now? He went down on the edge of the Seine, right? Fell in with the force of the bullet and didn't resurface."

Lucy nodded, her heart picking up speed by the second, only allowing the bare minimum of a squeaking response. "It was awful."

"I didn't just give him a modern gun. I also gave him a modern Kevlar, had him float downriver for about half a mile, met him there, and had him back to 2017 in time for dinner. And he had a hell of a time explaining the whole thing to a rather unamused version of Agent Christopher, but she came through in the end."

"But why? Why not just let - "

"I knew you and Rufus did it without him the first time, and I - I couldn't risk what would happen if he came home in one piece with the two of you. There's a very real chance that he would have stayed on and I - I would've been obsolete to everyone involved."

That was about as far from the truth as anything she'd ever heard, but a single arched brow was all the more effort she could put into refuting those words. There was another question, a misgiving that blazed through her like a house on fire, overtaking all else. "Why put so much effort into keeping it from us, though? We would've helped you, Wyatt, and I sure as hell would've liked to know that Dave wasn't actually dead this whole time."

He relinquished his grip on her, falling back by a half step to break their fragile ribbon of contact. If there had been pain in his expression before, that was nothing in comparison to the torture that flickered before her eyes now. "You. You with that long strand of pearls around your neck, lighting up an entire room with a smile that was brighter than all that damn glitter on your dress. You, Lucy, before your mom kidnapped you, before you were missing for six weeks of hell on earth, before Hollywood. Before Jessica. Before I made a mess of everything. Before I broke _you_."

His head turned from side to side on what seemed to be rusted-out hinges.

"I - I couldn't have handled that temptation," he admitted with new tears trailing from his eyes. "I would have - I don't know. God, what I would have said to you if I let myself get close enough. It would have been a fucking disaster, Lucy. I wanted nothing more than to change it all, to be selfish, to plead with you to save yourself from everything that was coming down the line, but that felt…it felt wrong. I know what it's like to come back to a reality that's been tampered with, _forged_...to have my own memories become someone else's damn playground. I was already screwing around with our current reality just by going there at all. It felt like an even bigger betrayal to do - to do more. To see you, to talk to you, and not take a frickin' stick of dynamite to every shitty thing that happened after that jump..? Impossible."

"But you - you didn't break me," she spoke through lips that threatened to tumble apart. "You didn't break anything."

"You're probably right about that first part. Nobody breaks Lucy Preston, not even when they try their damnedest. You're indestructible."

She bypassed that assessment with a discrediting blink. "Why didn't you tell me any of this sooner?"

His mouth wavered, shoulders lifting a fraction higher before plummeting again. "Didn't see the point. I did what I set out to do. Dave was okay and we knew the time machine was officially operational. By the time I tracked you down at that cafe a few weeks ago, there were about a thousand other things on my mind, all of which felt far more pressing than admitting to nearly robbing you of more than a year's worth of horrific memories. Or worse, whisking you straight out of the Twenties and dropping you somewhere far, far away from this nightmare of a life you've been forced to live."

"But how could you let me - I've been awful to you, Wyatt. I've accused you of - of being manipulative, of using my feelings against me and I...I was wrong. I was _so wrong_ , and you just took it over and over again. Why? Why, when you had the world's biggest do over and you didn't take it? You - you should have told me _this_."

"I never wanted to win a debate, Lucy." Composure had returned to his voice, rationalizing this answer without reservation. "I just wanted you to choose to be with me because you _wanted_ to, not because I had some damn trump card waiting in my back pocket."

"That is what I want." It was out of her like a spill of lightning, a witheringly truthful illumination that couldn't be taken back once it escaped. "I want to be with you."

His head shook, vehement denial shadowing his eyes. "Don't...don't say that if you - "

"I mean it."

"Okay," he said with a staccato exhale. "How about don't say it if you…if you can't follow through on it."

That condition was harder to combat, the usual hot button of panic flaring from inside her chest as she let her brain catch up to the words flying from her mouth. This could still backfire. Rittenhouse might not go down so easily. In fact, it was almost a guarantee that they wouldn't, and then were would she be? Living in constant fear of backlash, waiting for the other shoe to drop, another damn time machine carving through the stratosphere just when they were sure their lives were their own again? If she gave in and let herself fall, just to find that the whole damn universe would come undone the minute Lucy Preston and Wyatt Logan rolled the dice on a concept as improbable as happiness, then what? Where would that leave her this time?

But no. Not now. She couldn't let that line of thinking win when fear would put her on a train, and a train would take her somewhere beyond his reach. If she walked away here, after everything he'd already suffered through, Wyatt wouldn't come running after her. Not again. She knew that as well as she knew anything. She'd already burned through so many chances with him, and if she turned away now, there would be nothing but ashes in her wake.

"Even if I, um..." she smudged a tear beneath her fingertips, inhaling slowly, "if I were to tell you yes - yes I mean it, I'm following through on it, just _yes_...would you even believe me at this point? Because I do, I really do want this, but if you need me to - "

His hands warmed either side of her jaw, luring her in, gradually bringing her face to his until they were breathing the same air, mouths touching, worlds meeting, kissing, kissing, kissing…

Oh God, he was going to kiss her right off of her feet.

Lucy hooked an arm over his shoulder, clutched the folds of his jacket with her other hand, and still it wasn't enough. He must have felt it too, the helium-infused lightheadedness that was hitting her in waves, because he was cornering her, bracing an arm on the wall above her head as his lips captured hers in another bristling kiss.

It was only when his tongue got in the action that the commotion of the station rose higher in the thick muddle of her mind, a single whistle of appreciation bringing her back down to earth. She smiled dizzily against his lips, the vibrant aftermath of too many whirling kisses beaming right out of her.

"Maybe...maybe we should take this elsewhere."

"Elsewhere," he murmured, stealing another nip of her mouth, "sounds too far away."

Her eyes darted up to his, a sea of deep blue that called her out with the tide, convincing her to shut out the passing shapes and blurs from just beyond his shoulder, to forget the audience that had an all-access view into their landslide of emotions. She let him kiss her again. And again. Felt the pads of his thumbs hitching past the hem of her shirt.

A lewd comment from another passing spectator - one that was invariably spoken in clear-as-day English - reached Lucy's ears, and that was enough to finally bring Wyatt around too. He blinked through his heavy-lidded stupor, mouth still tipped to hers as he mumbled his way through one last kiss. "I thought this was cool in Europe."

"Must not have been a native," she returned with a slow smirk.

"Guess not."

Wyatt towed her along with him as he made a tricky backwards shuffle out of the station and into the warming breeze, and then Lucy was in his arms again, swept up to his mouth, a fanatical race of a kiss that gathered momentum with each passing second. The route back to the villa may have been the same one they'd traveled just minutes ago, but their speed had practically slowed to a crawl, suspended with shy smiles and stolen touches along the way, several of which almost had Lucy careening into all sorts of obstacles. Tree branches. Parked cars. Bicyclists with actual places to be, things to do, tasks that were far more pressing than loitering out on the sidewalk and making out at every intersection.

What a shame for the rest of mankind to be so burdened, because maybe for the first time ever, no to-do list in the world could have attracted Lucy's attention now.

But when the rambling passage back home was finally at its end, she decided to push her luck and ramble a little farther, tugging Wyatt's arm in the direction of a lone building set out beyond the shadow of the villa itself. "Do you know what's in there?"

He scrunched his brow, momentarily thrown off by the shift in course. "Uh...stables maybe? I think they have stables. Because that makes perfect sense for the two of them."

Lucy snickered at the dry crack of sarcasm in his voice, but really, who could blame them? She was sure Rufus had been doing just fine for himself at Mason Industries, but he'd more or less told them ages ago that most of what he made got funneled into supporting his family and setting up a college fund for his little brother. To get a colossal cash dump all at once, one that far exceeded any of their basic needs… Well, why the hell _not_ buy a house in Italy with some random stables thrown into the deal?

"We're taking a peek," she announced with a smile. "If that's okay with you, of course."

"Lead on," he said, his grin so indulgent that Lucy thought she might just overdose on it right then and there.

He'd guessed correctly. Stables, mostly empty with not a single animal in sight, but there was a small collection of outdoor supplies in one corner and a large tarp-covered object positioned almost dead-center in the middle of the room. It was Wyatt who now dragged her along, eagerness rippling off of him. "Tell me that's not - "

He cut himself off, let her hand drop, and went to work on unfastening the covering until a faded red convertible resting on four cinder blocks was unveiled.

"No way. No goddamn way. You - " he twisted to gape at Lucy, rocking back and forth on his heels. "Are you _seeing_ this?"

She tried, she really did, but no answer she gave was going to match his triumphant blaze of disbelief. "Yeah, it's a car. Pretty cool, huh."

His back was already turned, fingertips gliding along the chipped cherry paint. "A car. _A car_ , she says. A near-perfect Alfa Romeo, probably late '70s or early '80s, just sitting here to rot because Rufus and Jiya buy a place and never go and open the damn stables. But yeah… pretty cool."

Lucy chuckled to herself, not even bothering to defend her choice of wording. She tested the driver side door as he popped the latch and took a look beneath the hood. He was still muttering to himself - a click here, a twist there, another avid sigh to express his adoration - when Lucy decided to make herself comfortable on the smooth leather bench inside.

"Should I leave you two alone together, or is there a foreseeable end to this affair you're having?"

Wyatt snapped the hood back into place with a sheepish smile. "Sorry. I was maybe getting a little carried away there."

"Maybe."

He stalked around the car, expression downshifting into something a little more wicked. "Have I ever mentioned how damn good you look in a vintage car? Because it's not the first time I've noticed. There's really no telling where we would've ended up if Rufus had taken a little longer in getting _Citizen Kane_ to Hedy in '41."

She fought the need to roll her eyes at him. Wyatt Logan getting turned on by a woman in a classic car was only the most predictable thing imaginable from a man who'd once vocalized his love for the '50s based on nothing more than an affinity for the vehicles. "Please don't try to sell me on some kind of sexist pin-up girl fantasy you've been harboring..."

"Aren't you the one who told me it's not creepy to have - how did that go? Certain _appreciations_ , I believe it was." He climbed in after her, a hand settling on her thigh as soon as he had the door shut behind him. "You taking that back now, babydoll?"

"I don't know, sweetheart," she said with a laugh, "maybe I need a little convincing."

The gauntlet had been thrown down, a deepening in his gaze betraying the fact that he definitely intended to take the bait.

But even knowing he was about to act provided no adequate warning for the muscle behind it. He struck with sudden speed, the hand at her thigh dipping beneath her while his other hand shimmied between her shoulder blades, and then she was pitched sideways all at once, a human slingshot under Wyatt's command. Her hands found purchase on the seat behind him, a guttural noise of surprise - one that quickly unraveled into laughter - flooding out of her. She was in his lap, legs parted clumsily on either side of him, too off-center in her astonishment to make him pay for that dirty trick of brute strength.

The rasp of whiskers on her cheek silenced her laughter, and then his lips returned to hers, coaxing, wheedling, campaigning for an entrance she was helpless to deny. She was scooting forward without another thought beyond _closer_. He aided in the effort, a hand sliding to the base of her spine, not satisfied until the heat of her body was flush against his, her legs lassoing him in, arms looping across his broad shoulders.

He broke away much too soon, eyebrows up as he leaned back to make a vigilant scan of the room around them.

"What are you - "

"Rufus is bound to pop up now," he confided in a hushed voice. "He has a radar for us and cars, right? Darlington, Hollywood - as soon as this gets good, he's going to ruin it. It's his own demented version of Murphy's law."

"Something tells me that Rufus currently has better things to do than wander around in search of _us_. He and Jiya have been apart for how long now?"

"Solid point," Wyatt said with a clever little smirk. "So with that concern out of the way, I have one other question for you, Luce."

She ran her hands up his neck and tapped her nose to his. "Yeah, what's that?"

"Any ground rules I should be aware of this time?"

"Very funny."

"I mean it." His hands began to scoop up her back, taking her shirt with them. "Any special article of clothing I should leave on? Am I allowed to talk, or - "

Lucy silenced him in the most effective method available to her, tucking his lower lip soundly between her teeth until he was arching against her with a savage grunt. She retaliated with a leisurely rock of her hips, taking her sweet time in aligning herself against him just right, not that he allowed her to stay put for more than a handful of seconds. His head dropped back as her blouse came off in a hurry, and then there was a spiral of cool air and a press of lavish leather at her back, Wyatt's mouth in immediate pursuit as he positioned himself above her on the bench seat. He roamed lower to mark her neck, fingertips scraping to work the clasp of her bra while she began peeling him out of his shirt between gasps of delicious tension.

"You - you keep doing that with your mouth and we'll never need to discuss ground rules again."

She felt his smirk as it skimmed over the slope of her breast. "As if you've ever had any complaints."

"Well there was that one time…" she trailed off playfully.

"Bullshit," he huffed against her skin, bra officially gone thanks to persistence. His hands sank to her waistband, voice still channeling straight through her. "And on the off chance that it's not bullshit, I'm about to make you forget anything that _isn't_ this time, so if you have any last words now would be the time to share them."

"I did think of one ground rule, actually." Lucy took his jaw in her hands, flipping his charged gaze up to hers. "No leaving afterwards, not unless it's together."

"No leaving," he repeated quietly. "I like that one."

"Yeah?"

He lowered his mouth to her hip and left a reverent kiss in the shallow dip just above the margin of her jeans. "Yeah."

The button and zipper came apart next. Lucy curled her fingers into his short hair, exquisite anticipation gaining traction at the juncture of her legs...an anticipation she could feel reciprocated every time Wyatt shifted restlessly against her thigh.

The first jolt of his tongue was woefully abrupt, gone before she had a chance to enjoy it. "I see someone is already well beyond the point of requiring foreplay."

She wriggled impatiently from beneath him, but he remained where he was, elbows locked over her as he smirked upward, devilish and unyielding.

"Foreplay, Wyatt? Really? What _hasn't_ qualified as foreplay lately, because it feels like that's all we've - " his mouth closed over her unexpectedly, sending fractures of pleasure springing up her body, "...all we…"

"True," he hummed against her, a corrupting prickle of stubble on her sensitive skin. "You have me on edge all the damn time, Lucy Preston."

Wyatt crouched back as a flurry of arousal continued to dance at the fringes of her thinly-strung senses. He was far too at ease in a space so small, unendingly irritating in his ability to excel at any physical challenge that presented itself.

But that warped thread of jealousy died away quickly as he stripped himself down to nothing, the words _physical_ and _challenge_ seeming like terms that could only be to her benefit when he had eyes for no one but her.

How? It was still incomprehensible to Lucy that he wanted her, he chose her, he -

He was the one tearing her jeans and underwear the rest of the way down her legs with the tenacity of a prowling jungle animal closing in on his prey.

And it all came together without the need for logic, because _they_ came together just right, fitting end to end with a faultless synchronization that was as unthinkable as it was intoxicating. Years of rational skepticism went out the window each time she held Wyatt inside of her, the fairy tale of two fated souls colliding somehow not so impossible when they were thoroughly joined as one. Everything she'd once doubted was within her reach yet again, a stunning phenomenon to behold.

 _A lightning bolt from the heavens…_

 _You saved my life, you know_.

 _I'm still in love with you_... _I never stopped_.

She felt her name uttered against her neck, into her hair. He was slow at first, barely more than a gentle transfer of weight as he planted a hand up near her shoulder, and then he was driving himself in again with less control than ever before.

He met her eyes, a hint of smile hemmed in by the sheen of unshed tears. "Sorry, I...I, um - "

There was a long, trembling exhale then, one Lucy could feel as much inside of her as she could against her. Wyatt just shook his head as he gave up on the end of his sentence, lips climbing higher even as a tear slipped down his cheek and landed on hers.

She understood. Without words, without letters or breath or sound, she damn well understood exactly what he was feeling. She closed her eyes and let her hands smooth along the familiar pathways of his cheekbones until she could tempt his lips to hers, soliciting a kiss without bounds, searching and intuitive. They clung to each other, each touch more elastic, kisses dissolving one into the next, until the torch of pure affection - so long withheld, so foolishly denied - was almost unbearably bright between them.

Lucy slung a leg higher over one of his, needing as much of herself wrapped around him as possible, every cell of her body striving to merge finitely with his. Wyatt gnawed at her lip with a suppressed roar from somewhere in his chest, like a prizefighter doing everything he could to not go down prematurely.

"Lucy," he practically sang in a hot breath that thrummed through her. "Lucy…"

Whether he meant to send her off faster or rein her in for a little longer, she couldn't really say, not that she had any choice. She was a sprinting force of abandon, turning her face to latch onto whatever she could find, dusting kisses into his hair, across the slick line of his jaw.

The swinging tempo of his frame was becoming increasingly erratic, and not a moment too soon. She swayed with him, leveraging the last of her energy, pushing and pulling frantically as she found herself at the brink of - of _everything_.

They were here, unbroken in spite of every circumstance that should have left them damaged and disconnected, finished.

Now the only kind of finishing she was interested in was the one that would dispatch a galaxy of stars against the canvas of her eyelids. And he had right her there, falling headlong through a white supernova of raw release, lost in him. Found in him. Home with him.

She was only vaguely aware of his own passionate surrender. Wyatt ended with another formless thrust or two until he was collapsing against her, depleted and boneless. The scour of whiskers along her collarbone, the sharpness of his chin at rest against the rhythmic rise of her breast, heightened every dwindling flutter of pleasure inside of her. He was heavy, the weight of all that sinewy strength yielded completely to the cradle of her body. This car could swallow them both, fold them away into a world of their own, and Lucy wouldn't be able to form a single protest. If she belonged anywhere, she belonged right here.

When Wyatt moved, a slight shift upward as if to part from her completely, she was powerless to stop the sleepy whine that rang instinctively from her throat. Her arms were around his neck, holding tightly to the peace she couldn't bear to lose.

"Okay," he mumbled with an agreeable click of his tongue. "Okay, just - here…"

He rolled with her, tucking her back against the seat with his body wedged partway beneath her, one arm unfailingly coiled around her. Her eyes didn't budge as she wriggled down into the new arrangement of skin and limbs and comfort, not even as she felt the cozy invitation of a warm covering - his shirt? - descending over her.

Her voice was almost forgotten altogether. With an effort that may have qualified as superhuman, Lucy worked a semblance of an apology from her uncooperative mouth. "I…just give me another minute and then I'll - "

"Shh. You're ruining my nap, ma'am."

She smiled sluggishly against his chest and let her thoughts drift away on the mild breeze that whispered through the stable walls. Morning melted quietly into afternoon, but it all went unnoticed from beneath the blanket of a contentment that outshone the sun itself.

* * *

 _...to be continued, one last time :)_


	18. Antidote

_a/n: finalllly. Someone needed to shut this chapter down, because I was literally incapable of sticking to my plan of 2-3K to wrap-up this thing... oops. Overshot that goal by a smidge. But this is it - last chapter! Thanks to all who have supported & encouraged me along the way! I know it wasn't everyone's cup of tea at the start, so the continued interest from those of you who stuck with it has meant so, so much to me!_

 _And if you haven't dropped a line in that review box yet, this chapter would be a really excellent opportunity to do so :)_

* * *

The first stir of awareness dawned with an idling sigh. Wyatt was somehow the bed beneath her and the quilt around her, fencing her in from all sides. If there was a better feeling out there, Lucy was certain she hadn't experienced it.

A sleep-speckled grin unraveled over her face as she raised her head to seek some touchstone of time, of dappling daylight or flitting dusk, because her internal clock had become as slippery as satin, unfathomable after a constant whirlwind of decades and hemispheres. Her first view was of little more than Wyatt's shoulder and the upholstered leather seat that supported them both, so she pressed herself higher, reaching for the frame of the vehicle and arching her neck until she could find a spill of golden rays crawling lazily over the cement floor.

The sudden clamp of a hand around her wrist almost sent her sprawling for the floorboard, her startled gasp slicing through the silence as she reclaimed a safe spot against him.

"Sorry, I wasn't trying to..."

Wyatt didn't finish. His ocean eyes cut away from her, lips pursed and throat bobbing, but no other explanation rose to the surface. It was a rueful stubbornness that warped his brow, like he...like he thought history was repeating itself and he'd be damned if he let her slip out on him twice.

Lucy peered down at him with the beginnings of a crinkled frown. "Did you sleep at all, or was that just me?"

"I slept some," he answered gruffly.

"Oh really?"

His gaze snapped back up to her, turning petulant before he wrangled his features back into submission. "Yes, really. I just woke up a couple of times, and then maybe stayed awake once you got in the habit of stretching and re-situating yourself on top of me every thirty seconds."

"You thought I'd leave." It wasn't so much an accusation as it was a crushing blow to her own heart. He didn't trust her. Of course he didn't trust her. Why should he, right?

The hand on her wrist smoothed over hers, easing against her palm and working through the spaces between her fingers. "A reflex, Lucy. It's nothing but a reflex, one I'm sure will ease with time. Quit worrying about it."

"I'm not - "

"You are," he broke in gently. "And I love you for it, but it's not necessary. I'll get past it. _We'll_ get past it."

"How are you always so sure of the things you're always so sure of?" she asked with a quirk of an eyebrow.

Humor may have colored her voice, but just as he'd done a million times before, Wyatt saw right past it. His other hand slid beneath the makeshift sheet of a shirt he'd draped around her, not stopping till his open palm was splayed across her heart. "Because I'm sure of _this_."

"Even...even now," came her scratchy response, laden with a monstrous stockpile of regret. "Even after - "

"Yes."

She angled her head higher, making sure to catch his crisp blue gaze before she challenged him again. "You'd really let go of - of everything I've put you through? You can't just...just forgive all of that, the leaving, the way I've treated you since - "

"I can," he said with a tearful smile reflecting up at her. "I already have. We've been over this before, haven't we? The slate is clean."

She hid her own build of tears against his shoulder, feeling as if the anchor of his solid form might be her only reliable link to the reality of this place, the car, the stable, Italy, _him_. "I might need to hear it a few more times if that's okay with you."

"I'll repeat it till you're sick of my damn voice," he answered with a rumbling chuckle.

Lucy shook her head from where it was still burrowed into him. _Impossible_. That day would never come.

He cinched an arm around her waist, his other hand moving to comb through the dark hair that fanned over her shoulder and across his chest. "I love you, Lucy. Scars and all."

Her response was so instinctive, so instantaneous, that it couldn't be questioned. She wasn't sure when exactly she had come to terms with it, but the insistent prodding in her heart had been present for quite some time, towering higher and louder every time he was near. Maybe it hadn't ever really taken leave - not when Jessica appeared, not when the mission ended, not when she booked a ticket and cut all ties. Not when Wyatt stood at the edge of the Mothership and told her it was now or never. Definitely not when he was lying beneath her, fingers imprinting her skin, chasing his release as earnestly as he'd chased her across an ocean.

With all the heart she had left to give, Lucy lifted her head and gave breath to the inerrant truth that bound them together. "I...I love you too, Wyatt. Even when I thought I couldn't - couldn't love anyone, not anymore, but I… Well, I think I've known I was in over my head from the moment you said it after Providence, and you were right. It scared the hell out of me, to be confronted with it right then and there when I - when I - "

"When you weren't ready," he provided with a gravelly rut of his rapidly crumbling voice. "A shitty sense of timing is one of the Logan family trademarks."

"How about an endless reserve of patience and compassion and bullheaded confidence? Does that all come from the Logans too, or is that just you?"

She saw the quick flicker of surprise that he so hastily covered with a self-effacing smirk, but Lucy didn't let the impending brush-off take wing. Her hand raked up the nape of his neck and into his hair, drawing him in for a kiss that obliterated whatever half-assed reply he'd been primed to deliver.

Hell, her own reply was almost obliterated too when his tongue slid over hers and the hand at her waist snuck lower.

"Thank you, Wyatt," she whispered raggedly against the shuddering friction of his lips. "Thank you for not giving up on me."

"You - you say that like I had any option."

But he did. No matter what he said now, there had always been a choice. The fact that his heart kept pointing her direction through any of this was a marvel he'd never willingly acknowledge, a series of hurtful setbacks he'd graciously dismiss for her sake. He'd chosen her and kept on choosing her, even when she'd mercilessly rejected him several times over.

New tears sprang to Lucy's eyes, the rigid casing of all those months spent apart - layers of grief, the cage of her deep-rooted loneliness, every fragmented patch of her soul - falling away bit by bit. He hadn't wanted to weigh another option aside from this one. It was that simple for him. It was that simple for _them_.

His face nuzzled into her hair, fingertips sketching a meandering line down her side. He cleared his throat as he wilted back against the seat once more, eyes glistening tenderly despite the way his mouth pulled to one side. "So what do you say - how about we get some more of that bread from this morning, maybe a little pasta - since obviously that's a nonnegotiable given the current locale - and we carb load for an entire day of nothing but this..."

The _this_ he had in mind was made crystal clear with a firm swipe of his thumb on the outer curve of her breast.

"Carb loading, huh?"

"Mmhmm. We're gonna need to keep our energy levels up if there's any hope of continuing at a sustainable pace."

Bread and pasta and Wyatt Logan? That was all the incentive her body needed to justify the otherwise unappealing task of leaving their indolent little cocoon.

They dressed each other about as effectively as if they'd been blindfolded, far too preoccupied with the intermittent distraction of touching and kissing to be anything but negligent in the goal of actually making themselves presentable. And when they came streaming into the sun glazed kitchen some time later, a few dallying pit stops made along the way, their laughter-steeped raid was barely underway when they were busted by a pair of unamused faces looming in the archway.

"Where the hell have you two been?"

With Jiya's scowling bad cop impression out of the way, Rufus took up his role as the obligatory good cop, backpedaling meekly. "What she means is we were starting to get worried. Not that we need to - "

Jiya cut him off, arms swinging as she gestured for him to give her the floor again. "What I _mean_ , Rufus, was about as straightforward as it sounded - where the hell have you two been? It's a real pain in the ass to sit on good news for as long as you guys have been gone. And spare me the details please, but oh my god, what could possibly keep you from answering your phone or showing your damn faces for half a day?"

Lucy abandoned her post at the bread box, an anxious tremor dashing down her spine. "You did say _good_ news, right?"

She felt the soothing caress of Wyatt's hand on her back, a tether that promised to hold steady despite the violence of the storm.

"Definitely good," Jiya confirmed with a corner of her mouth flagging upwards. "Emma was spotted this morning trying to duck out of an Intensive Care Unit in stolen scrubs. She's officially in government custody with several departments jockeying for who gets the first stab at locking her away for life."

There was a fumbling question that didn't quite come out clearly - an appeal of _you're sure?_ or _are you serious?_ \- but it was all Lucy could do to keep her feet beneath her. An actual arrangement of lucid consonants and vowels just wasn't in the cards. Wyatt crept closer, arms now wound fully around her from behind, his chin tucked into her shoulder as his broad frame encompassed her much smaller one. He was batting the specifics around with Rufus and Jiya, a swift exchange of words that twirled all around the kitchen without ever finding a secure foothold between Lucy's ears.

 _Government custody_. She'd gotten stuck in her own head somewhere after that phrase. Emma was in government custody.

"It's over."

That was her voice, high and reedy, laced with an unlikely throb of hope as the conversation continued to spin its web around her.

But Wyatt heard. He stopped, maybe mid-sentence, and turned Lucy from inside his embrace until their eyes connected. Surreal blue in a grayscale universe, a point of reference when all else failed her.

"It's over," he agreed, sotto-toned and unswerving. "But it doesn't have to be as final as it sounds, you know...not anymore."

With the buzz of so many competing emotions charging every atom she possessed - racing to the tips of her fingers, sizzling across her chest, thudding against her skull - she needed him to be a hell of a lot clearer than that. There was no room for guesswork, not now.

The resonant electricity in his gaze intensified. "We still have a time machine, Luce, and very little supervision to go with it."

"We have a time machine _for now_. No telling when they'll come swipe it out from under us, is there? We - we tried before. We tried and - "

"And now we try again," he affirmed calmly. "Jiya's one of them now, remember? She's our in for keeping it for as long as we need it. And look, I respect the hell out of Agent Christopher, but she preferred to play inside the lines as much as her conscious would allow. Jiya, though? She - "

"Doesn't give a single fuck about the lines."

Lucy's eyes skated across the room, shell-shocked in the presence of a winning smile that overtook Jiya's face. Rufus stood right behind her, sporting a lively smile of his own, rock solid in his support.

"If I can put Emma off for a few weeks with some BS answers about time machine maintenance, you really think Homeland stands a chance at outmaneuvering the pair of us?"

"The _four_ of us," Wyatt breathed against Lucy's cheek, delicately amending the words Rufus had chosen. "We do this together, all four of us. There's more than enough brain power in this room to figure it out, I'm sure of it. We just didn't have enough time before."

Lucy's attention was back on him, the muscles of her mouth too rubbery to do anything but let it hang open, each patternless inhale and exhale feeling even more unbelievable than the last. And a single name, one she'd spoken so rarely in months - in actual _years_ , now - beat loudly in the forefront of her mind.

Amy. _Amy, Amy, Amy_.

Wyatt gripped Lucy's arms in both of his hands, forehead listing against hers. "You in? Because I'm still waiting to see what all the fuss is about, ma'am."

* * *

Six times. Six awful, gut-wrenching, torturous times. Six of the worst nights of his life, if only because he had nothing to give her, no solution, no consolation, no words of substance.

Wyatt stayed awake through most of night one and two, held her as tightly as he could, collected her tears of frustration in his shirt, all while repeating a chorus of meaningless encouragements. And in true Lucy Preston fashion, she'd forced a stiff upper lip by morning, soldiering on better than most of the sorry bastards he'd served with, a fact he'd gladly tell them to their faces if given the chance.

Their third failure hadn't garnered the same reaction. They landed at the villa in strained silence with Jiya doing the honors, clicking through a quick internet search that yielded the same answer as before - many Amy Prestons existed in the world, but none of them were _the_ Amy Preston. Lucy's face remained blank. There was no sign of disappointment, no tears, not even when they were alone that night. She nestled in, closed her eyes, and to his unending surprise, her breathing leveled off without any event.

But when Wyatt woke up in the near-black room somewhere south of midnight, she was no longer hidden beneath the fold of soft sheets. Her back was to him, ramrod straight, fists curled in defiance next to her.

"Luce?"

She shook her head, raven locks of hair cascading over her shoulders.

That had him blinking past the drag of sleepiness at his eyelids. Adrenaline coursed through him as he eased his hands over her arms and slipped around her. "Lucy? Look, I know this has been hard, but it's going to be - "

"No," she cut in scratchily. "Not that. Don't say…"

He waited as she collected a long, unchecked breath.

"I need you to talk about something else," she said at last. "Anything else."

Every recent conversation had revolved around the puzzle of saving her sister - what had changed and what was the same, what they knew and what they'd carefully pieced together, the vaguely drawn sketch of when and where Emma had probably been. Maps, timelines, family trees. He didn't just think of it, he dreamt of it, memorized each theory till it was all embedded in his memory. To actively _not_ talk about Amy…? He wasn't prepared for that, which left him frozen for just a moment, incapable of grasping a single thread that wasn't an offering of sympathy or a restructured game plan.

And then a memory that felt buried beneath a thousand years of rubble broke through to the surface; one he linked with Lucy and impending panic, a story he'd stored away with the image of trembling hands and faraway eyes.

"Tell me about the band."

"What?"

"The band," he tried again, pressing his thumbs against her shoulders and rolling through the taught chord of her muscles. "Now that I've heard you belt out a hell of a tune, I know there's no way you should've ever given up on music. What was it like? What were _you_ like?"

She didn't answer right away, and the longer the silence built between them, the less confident he felt about his choice of diversion. What was he thinking, bringing that up tonight? Because surely the band reminded her of the car accident, and sinking into a river was probably the last thing she needed to envision at the moment, not when...not when she'd probably felt like she'd been sinking again right before he found her sitting up on the edge of the bed.

But something had come loose. He could feel it in the framework of her slim shoulders. Another stroke of his fingers and thumbs was all it took.

"We were folk before folk was cool again."

"Is that right?"

She hummed a yes, head tilting sideways. "I was a total ball of stress the first time I sang live. Almost got sick in the bathrooms before we went on. I can barely remember the whole first set. It's like I blacked out from the minute I got shoved on stage and only came back when it was time to break."

"Really? But you're amazing. How could you be _that_ nervous?"

"You do remember the start of that performance in Hollywood, don't you?"

Wyatt swept her hair away from her neck and let his mouth touch down at the base of her cool white skin. "The ending was far more memorable."

"The one on stage, or…"

"Both." His hands worked down her back, not slowing until he was wrapped around her waist. "The song was pretty damn mind-blowing, but Jesus, Lucy...that was just the beginning."

"Yeah, well...it's not - I don't think I could have…"

He guided her with him, lounging backwards into her pillow until she was cuddled into his chest and her eyes were within view. "Don't think you could have done what?

"Sang. Let my guard down. Given into what I really wanted as we stood next to each other in front of that pool." She blinked quickly, mouth twisting with a poignant smile. "Any of it. If not for you - and really, _just you_ \- I couldn't have done any of it."

"I know the feeling," he murmured into her hair. "I've said it before - you get under my skin, Preston."

"Like a virus, right?"

"More like an antidote."

Shiny tears crystallized in her lashes then. Good tears. Purging tears. She closed her eyes and let them fall, her cheek shifting to find rest against him.

And she slept. Not right away, but it came eventually, and when it did, Wyatt found his heart unclenching for the first time since he'd woken up.

But another few days and they were in the same place. A fourth attempt had become a fourth failure. Lucy was already tucked in up to her chin, eyes sealed shut by the time he'd finished in the bathroom. There wasn't so much as a twitch of movement as he settled in next to her on the bed.

He didn't sleep deeply that night. He couldn't. So when she sat up shortly after three, hands yanking clumps of hair away from her face, he was ready. This time he peppered her with questions about her career at Stanford, forging ahead until he knew her favorite topic to lecture on, the names of her best students, the biggest headaches that came with dumbass department politics. He didn't let up until she was too tired to talk, so bombarded with a full-on blitz of yawns that she couldn't get another word out.

With two of those middle-of-the-night incidents under his belt, he thought he had it under control.

Then failure number five knocked him straight on his ass.

Lucy had submitted herself to another round of muffled tears that night, a reaction so similar to one and two that he'd been lulled into believing the worst of it was out by the time he hit the lights. She let him hold her. Let him tell her they would keep trying. She wasn't numbing herself against what she felt, so he thought...no, he _assumed_ , and assuming never got him anywhere good.

She wasn't there. That realization came smacking against his brain before he even had his eyes open. The bed was empty on her side, sheets agonizingly cold. She'd _been_ gone.

He was flying through the door in nothing but underwear, barely suppressing his need to start shouting her name loud enough to wake the whole house, the whole village, the whole damn continent.

She wasn't there. Not holed up in the bathroom, not parked in front of the TV, not sitting at the shadowed kitchen bar. It the took three meticulous scans of the countertop to establish that she hadn't left him a note this time. Too bad he had no idea if that should be taken as a good omen or a bad one.

He was outside then, but from there he didn't have the slightest inclination on where to go, what to do. The train? Had she finally decided to cash in on that ticket he'd purchased? Did trains even run this late? If so, it might be faster for him to grab a cab and head her off in Milan before she could switch lines, but that meant finding a cab at -

A glance down at his wrist reminded him that he was practically naked in the middle of the night, no watch, no shirt or pants, no phone, nothing.

"Wyatt?"

 _Lucy_.

She squinted at him through the darkness, perched on a low wall several yards away, a crumbling remnant of the original architecture that served no purpose beyond simple aesthetic appeal at this point. Except now it was upholding his entire future, of course.

His desire to hurl a few feverish obscenities in her direction dissipated with each footstep. Not to say that the message of _you gave me a fucking heart attack_ had quite faded away by the time he reached her, but he'd at least stifled the urge to actually say it aloud.

She knew, though. Her eyes swam with repentance, so big and glossy in the pale mirror of moonlight. His ass was barely making contact with the stone barrier before remorse came pouring out of her. "I'm sorry. Wyatt, I - I'm _sorry_ , okay?"

His voice was a brittle crack of anguish. "Why?"

"It just - it felt too small in there. I needed...I don't know, fresh air or - or… I wasn't actually leaving, okay? I never even - "

"I know all of that," he said with a sag of his shoulders. "And I understand. What I'm asking is why didn't you wake me up? For the love of God, Lucy, _please_ just wake me up, okay?"

"You - you looked so…" she exhaled unevenly, looking down at her hands. "I thought it would pass before you'd notice. I'd come back and everything would be fine and you'd actually get a full night of sleep for once."

"I don't need sleep. I need to know you're here."

He sounded pathetic even to himself, so it was no surprise that his confession brought her closer, arms slinking up to his shoulders as her head bundled into the crook of his neck. "I'm here. I'm still here. I'm not leaving."

"No leaving," he mumbled against the top of her head.

"It's a ground rule. We have to listen to those."

Wyatt nodded weakly. The delirium of blood pumping too quickly through his veins had subsided, leaving him zapped, passive.

"Let's go back to bed, alright?"

"I'm - don't rush yourself. I'm fine."

"Wyatt," she breathed quietly into the night, her hand in his hair coaxing a soft grunt out of him. "C'mon. It's too cold for you to be sitting around in boxer briefs. Let's go in."

That was how the fifth setback ended, with Lucy leading him by the hand, nudging him into bed, reconciling her body to his until they were one entwined orchestra of limbs. There was a tiny protest in his head, an assertion that he was supposed to be the one who was taking care of her, but that notion had gone too far out the damn window to have any significance now. Five failures, and she was still hanging on. Five rounds of miscalculation, five shots that had come up short, but she was there nonetheless, pushing through the fear in the only way she knew how. If she wasn't quitting, neither was he.

Or at least that was the story Wyatt told himself. Because deep down, he was sure that neither one of them could handle many more of these crippling disappointments, and then jump number six happened. Their sixth flop, a jump to the '50s that ended no differently than the others. But Lucy was itching with determination after they'd landed, huddling over the tablet with Jiya, pointing, muttering, scheming. They were close. That was what she told him as she sat up next to the sink an hour or so later, still fiddling with the tablet as he brushed his teeth. They were so damn close.

Wyatt had no idea why they were any closer this time than they had been before, but he didn't get an opportunity to press for details. She sought out a minty kiss as soon as he'd finished, not letting up or letting go for anything in the world. He was inside of her long before he had any chance of staggering down the hallway and making use of their perfectly capable bed.

Not that he was complaining.

The day of the seventh jump dawned so brightly that he found it damn near disconcerting, too eerily ironic for his liking. And then Rufus added a cheery declaration of "lucky number seven" to the mix right before takeoff, adding more pitted dread to Wyatt's gut feeling that this would be no different than the six that preceded it.

He was wrong. Thank God and fate and everything else, because he was absolutely, unequivocally wrong, wrong, wrong.

And even as Jiya and Rufus whooped through the victory, shoving various illuminated proofs of Amy's existence into Lucy's line of sight, she couldn't cast off the desensitized look of confusion that clung to her face. Not until Jiya dropped them in California, opened the hatch to a lush park just blocks from where Lucy had once lived, and Wyatt endured the mangling grip of her hand as she navigated the quiet streets from memory. Not until she had her sister back in her arms, barely biting back sobs, did the white fog of a doubt finally evaporate.

The screeching laughter that took its place would be a sound he happily carried to his grave.

He wasn't sure exactly what Lucy and Amy had discussed late into the night - or the morning, actually - of that first day in a newly restored universe. He'd gone to bed hours ahead of feeling the mattress dip next to him, allowing them the privacy they deserved. He didn't give a damn about how much of the truth Lucy had admitted to her sister. After what they'd gone through, non-disclosure could kiss both of their asses. What he did know for certain was that Lucy had definitely shared some abridged version of their personal chaos, because in a matter of days they were packing up what Lucy wanted from the house that could no longer be a home to her, the same refrain falling from her lips as often as she could bear the vulnerability - "I can't be here. I'm sorry, I just - I _cannot_ be here."

"It's okay, Lucy," her sister - _the_ sister, he kept thinking with a wildfire grin - reassured over and over again. "You need to do what's best for you. And you know I'll come see you anywhere, but if we're legit talking Italy - c'mon, _Italy_ \- you know I'm in."

Wyatt added a raving enthusiasm for the entire country of Italy to his growing mental tally of things the Preston sisters seemed to have in common. So far, he'd branded them both as whip-smart, tall and slender, full of contagious laughter, religious tea drinkers, motormouths who talked over each other at warp speed, and now this - they were prone to eagerly repeating the word 'Italy' with various levels of emphasis.

"You'll really come?"

"It's you and Christmas and Italy," Amy buzzed back with a blinding smile. "Of course I'll come."

He added blinding smiles to his Preston sister list. And then he tacked on airtight hugs too, because they exchanged another one - probably their twentieth breathless embrace in less than three days - once Lucy finally let that promise flourish to life inside of her head. In another few weeks, Amy was joining them for the holidays. He could see it every time it struck her anew - Amy, real and alive and full of energy, was as accessible as a plane ticket, a phone call, a text message. No matter how many demons Lucy still battled, that grounding truth never failed to reignite her fledgling grasp on the hope that was slowly being mended from within.

And just when Wyatt thought there were no major hurdles left to cross, no obligations or commitments or regressions in sight, Lucy threw a total wrench in the works. As if he should have expected anything less from her.

She'd gotten an email from an old colleague, one who was teaching at a school in Vienna. He needed someone to come cover his last week before the end of the term, and he couldn't think of a better guest lecturer than her.

Wyatt agreed on that count - no one spun a relatable version of history like Lucy did. Letting her go, however, was the most disagreeable idea he could imagine.

But she wanted to, he could see it welling up in her eyes, this clawing need to go test her limits, to find her place again in a world she'd once loved. And he knew without making her say it - this had to be _just_ her. She'd never be sure she was back on her feet again if he didn't let her go alone.

So he did it. He watched her go. He was misty-eyed in the same damn train station as before, watching her dark head disappear into the train car, the worst case scenario from not so long ago now materializing in real time. Gone, but not for long. Not for fourteen months, not for four hundred and twenty-four days. It seemed he was always counting _something_ when it came to her, but now he was only counting eight days. Eight days. Five spent in a lecture hall, sandwiched by the requisite travel time on either end. He could handle eight days, right?

Wrong. He was a fucking basket case who scheduled his whole existence around her nightly phone calls and the occasional blip of a text message.

But that was over as of right this second, because he was standing on the train platform again. Heart in his throat _again_ , waiting on Lucy Preston to come and deliver her usual emotional barrage to his senses. And then that spectacular airtight hug - the one that was as much hers as it was Amy's - thundered right into him, her blurry vortex of limbs sucking him in before he even got a decent glimpse of her face.

"Hi."

"Hi to you too," he returned, his tone far less chirping than her own greeting. "How was it?"

"Incredible. Really, Wyatt, so good."

"And you were…"

"Surprisingly okay. Not - you know, not without my moments, but - " she stopped and pulled back to frame his face in her hands, an ivory grin caught beneath the dull ebb of overhead lights. "We did talk about this, didn't we? I distinctly remember giving updates to someone every night. Could've sworn it was you."

She was kissing him before he could volley back an answer, not that he was sure he could adequately express himself. She was right - they had gone over this exact line of questioning every day since their last hug, last kiss, last face-to-face point of contact. To have her in front of him, though...that was a whole different story. He knew too well how brave she could be over the phone, after all. But her eyes…?

Her eyes were capable of transmitting an entirely different frequency than any voice on earth.

"Did Amy make it okay?" she asked from against his mouth, hands still tangled with his jacket.

"Yep. Got in last night just fine."

"And she likes it? Her room? The villa? Is it feeling too crowded with - "

"Lucy."

She snickered with sudden self-awareness, knocking her forehead gently to his. "Right. Sorry."

Wyatt leaned into another kiss, a small sampling of everything he really wanted, before taking her bag in one hand and weaving her narrow fingers through the other. "No sorry needed. Just thought you might as well ask her these things yourself, right?"

Her face lifted into a cloudless smile, one that lingered the whole way to the villa. That same smile damn near erupted when Amy flew at her from across the kitchen.

He almost couldn't recognize it for what it was. All of them - Lucy, Amy, Rufus, and Jiya - under one roof for tonight and the night after that and so many more to come, laughing and cooking and making a damn mess...it was family. It was _his_ family. The first one he'd had in - in God, who knew how long. They just clicked, this strange mosaic of people, and the intensity of that feeling almost had Wyatt lurching off his feet.

It was something he almost needed to observe from a distance to understand. And besides that, he made a cognizant effort to fade into the background so Lucy could fully bask in every moment she had with Amy. His eight days were nothing in comparison to the amount of time she'd lost with her sister.

But it wasn't long before he began to notice that Lucy was actively repelling his attempt to be selfless. She gravitated to his side again and again, some unwritten instinct bringing her closer every time he'd moved away. The gesture itself would have been unbelievably endearing if not for the twinge of anxiousness in her gaze that he'd recognize anywhere.

Too small. She kept glancing at him like the room was getting too small.

"Everything okay?" he asked against the shell of her ear as soon as he was sure no one else was listening. "Because if something's - "

"Nothing's wrong." She bit her lip for a moment, little flecks of amber catching light in her eyes. "It's better than okay. It's...shockingly perfect, actually."

"But you keep coming over here like you need - I don't know, need _something_ or want - "

"You don't get it." Her smile was soft, almost pitying at his apparent obliviousness. She pulled him through an arching doorway, boxing out the image of Jiya and Rufus competitively flicking popcorn at each other while Amy offered various critiques based on precision and style.

From the dimness of the hallway, where it was just the pull of her magnetic eyes on him, Wyatt struggled to stay focused on the cause for their seclusion. "I don't get what, exactly?"

She drew a long breath, one that doubled his concern in an instant. "When you found me in France, I was - I was a shadow, Wyatt. Hell, I was a shadow _afraid_ of my own shadow. And while there's definitely been a lot of progress since then, I - I guess it's something I'm still having to work at. And you - you're the one who's been there, who's seen the worst of it, and never once made me feel like I was being stupid, or - or selfish - "

"Lucy, you never - "

"I know," she intervened with a grin. "Trust me, I already know. And it's that - that constant need you have to tell me how _you_ see me...that's what made it so...so hard, being apart this time. Even for eight days, which I know isn't that long, but - "

"Me too," he said, involuntarily shuffling closer. "I didn't want to sound - I didn't want you to feel like - "

"Like I was being smothered?" she asked knowingly. "So now I'm the one who's smothering you, simply because you're too worried about smothering me?"

Wyatt drew her in with a hand on her hip, fixing his best leering smirk into place. "You can smother me whenever you'd like, Luce."

The distasteful wrinkle of her nose couldn't distract him from the laugh that escaped her mouth. "Oh my god, you're such a - "

"Get a room already," Rufus called out abruptly, his head stuck obtrusively through the opening to the kitchen. "This is a public hallway, dammit."

Popcorn sailed over his shoulder unannounced, kernels pelting all three of them as Amy and Jiya launched a coordinated attack. Lucy batted at the onslaught with a squawk of delight, and something about her then - crinkling eyes, popcorn in her hair, surrounded by everyone she loved - had him bold and uninhibited in his affection for her. Here she was, a completely different woman than the one who'd fought herself at every turn, now brimming with more luminous happiness than she'd ever thought she could know again.

Wyatt dipped her there, his arms firm around her, popping off with a kiss that garnered a boom of fanfare from their audience. Lucy fumbled for a point of balance, but she gave it up within seconds in favor of the kiss itself, her hands on his neck, in his hair, a daring hint of her tongue peeking out to taste his lip.

He righted her in another moment, voice rough as he spoke against her mouth. "How's that for _public hallway_ , Rufus?"

More popcorn rained down around them, but whatever goading responses were sent their way, Wyatt heard none of it.

 _Inevitable_. That's what he saw as he fell headfirst into her grinning, satisfied expression. If she'd ever thought once, for even a split-second, that he could forget her, move on, go elsewhere or choose another future… God, no. There was no distance, no ocean, no amount of loss or suffering that could remedy the ache he felt for her. They weren't broken or ruined. They weren't out of chances. They would build and rebuild and then build again if that was what it took.

And eight days might not be so long to spend apart from the one person who understood you better than anyone, but watching her now, right there inside of his arms...

Dammit, was she ever still a sight for some very sore eyes.


End file.
